Good book on science/religion

[billvon 3,131]

I'm most of the way through a book by Stephen Jay Gould, entitled "Rocks of Ages - Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life." It's an excellent take on the roles religion and science play in our daily lives, and how they can peacefully coexist. He goes through the history of the struggle to reconcile the two, going all the way back to Alexander the Great and going forward to modern day creationism-in-schools battles. He goes in-depth into the problems that people _have_ had with reconciling the two, including some very bad behavior by both religions and secular scientists.

His central thesis is that religion and science are both equally valid under the NOMA principle - non-overlapping magisteria. His point is that religion and science are so different that they really _can't_ be in conflict; it's like saying that medieval english literature contradicts the design of a Mars rover. Science explains how the world works, and religion gives us a framework to understand our place in it.

Some interesting tidbits -

He quotes a paper from Pope John Paul that acknowledges that evolution is far more than a theory; that the convergence of so many disciplines on its validity is remarkable and cannot be overlooked.

Creationists have been trying literally every angle since the turn of the last century to get religion taught in schools. The founding of Cornell University was resisted strongly by local churches because they feared they would not teach religion; a local minister attempted to get an ordinance passed that would have required any local teachers (i.e. Cornell professors) to belong to holy orders. The creationism battle has changed every time a new angle is declared unconstitutional. The latest angle is intelligent design, which is about as far as creationists are allowed to go nowadays.

The whole "everyone told Columbus he was going to fall off the edge of the earth" thing is hooey. When you think about it, navigation by sextant and clock is impossible if you don't believe the earth is round - and there were plenty of ship's captains in Columbus's day who navigated by sextant and clock.

[GARYC24 3]

Thanks, will have to pick that up..maybe while I'm getting truck maintenance done tommorrow.
Also, here another book "Case for a Creator"
adding a link from it's website
(not to change your subject,,just adding a little extra reading, stuff)


Title: Physicist Wins Spirituality Prize
Date: 03.11.05
By Larry B. Stammer, Times Staff Writer

Charles Townes, the UC Berkeley professor who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in quantum electronics and then startled the scientific world by suggesting that religion and science were converging, was awarded the $1.5-million Templeton Prize on Wednesday for progress in spiritual knowledge.

The prize, the proceeds of which Townes said he planned to largely donate to academic and religious institutions, recognized his groundbreaking and controversial leadership in the mid-1960s in bridging science and religion.

The co-inventor of the laser, Townes, 89, said no greater question faced humankind than discovering the purpose and meaning of life — and why there was something rather than nothing in the cosmos.

"If you look at what religion is all about, it's trying to understand the purpose and meaning of our universe," he said in a telephone interview from New York this week. "Science tries to understand function and structures. If there is any meaning, structure will have a lot to do with any meaning. In the long run they must come together."

Townes said that it was "extremely unlikely" that the laws of physics that led to life on Earth were accidental.

Some scientists, he conceded, had suggested that if there were an almost infinite number of universes, each with different laws, one of them was bound by chance to hit upon the right combination to support life.

"I think one has to consider that seriously," Townes told The Times. But he said such an assumption could not currently be tested. Even if there were a multitude of universes, he said, we do not know why the laws of physics would vary from one universe to another.

Townes said science was increasingly discovering how special our universe was, raising questions as to whether it was planned. To raise such a question is the work of scientists and theologians alike, said Townes, who grew up in a Baptist household that embraced "an open-minded approach" to biblical interpretation. He is a member of the First Congregational Church in Berkeley and prays twice daily.

In 1964, while a professor at Columbia University, Townes delivered a talk at Riverside Church in New York that became the basis for an article, "The Convergence of Science and Religion," which put him at odds with some scientists.

In the article, Townes said science and religion should find common ground, noting "their differences are largely superficial, and … the two become almost indistinguishable if we look at the real nature of each." When MIT published the article, a prominent alumnus threatened to break ties with the institution.

In a 1996 interview with The Times, Townes said that new findings in astronomy had opened people's minds to religion. Before the 1960s, the Big Bang was just an idea that was hotly debated. Today, there is so much evidence supporting the theory that most cosmologists take it for granted.

"The fact that the universe had a beginning is a very striking thing," Townes said. "How do you explain that unique event" without God?

Townes this week spoke of his interest in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The sheer number of stars and planets, he said, would likely increase the probability of intelligent life elsewhere. But for life to get started on even one planet is "highly improbable. It might not have started more than two or three times," he said. "It would be fascinating to find somebody out there."

Born in Greenville, S.C., in 1915, Townes received a bachelor's degree in physics, summa cum laude, from Furman University in Greenville when he was 19. Two years later he received a master's in physics from Duke University, and in 1939 a doctorate in physics from Caltech with a thesis on isotope separation and nuclear spins.

During World War II he helped develop radar systems that functioned in the humid conditions of the South Pacific.

His research led to the development of the maser in 1954, which amplifies electromagnetic waves, and later co-invented the laser. His work, for which he shared the 1964 Nobel in physics, led to a wide variety of inventions and discoveries in medicine, telecommunications, electronics, computers and other areas.

He was named provost and professor of physics at MIT in 1961, director of the Enrico Fermi International School of Physics in 1963, and, in 1967, professor of physics at UC Berkeley, a post he held until 1986.

The Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities was established in 1972 by Sir John Templeton, a global investor and philanthropist. Past winners include Mother Teresa; evangelist Billy Graham; Holmes Rolston III, a philosopher, clergyman and scientist whose explorations of biology and faith have helped foster religious interest in the environment; and John C. Polkinghorne, a British mathematical physicist and Anglican priest.

The Duke of Edinburgh is to present the prize to Townes in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in April.

[kallend 2,175]

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and there were plenty of ship's captains in Columbus's day who navigated by sextant and clock.

Is that right? I was under the impression that in Columbus's day the clocks were so poor that they couldn't be used for effective navigation. Newton mentions clocks as a possibility in Principia, but favors a different method for exactly this reason.

The "longitude problem" wasn't solved until Harrison's 1764 test of his chronometer.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[SpeedRacer 1]

Sounds like a good read. I might check that one out. Its cool because I heard that Gould himself is an atheist, but apparently, he didn't take the Speakers Corner Atheist approach, which is just to say "Fuck religion, it's all bullshit!" and leave it at that.

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The whole "everyone told Columbus he was going to fall off the edge of the earth" thing is hooey.

I don't think any educated person today believes that people thought the world was flat in Columbus' time. That was kind of a legend, like George Washington cutting down the cherry tree. It was well known that the world was round since the time of the ancient Greeks. (not sure what this has to do with the science/religion thing).

Speed Racer
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[billvon 3,131]

>I was under the impression that in Columbus's day the clocks were so
>poor that they couldn't be used for effective navigation.

Well, there were several varieties of clocks around.

Before Columbus's time, 'hourglass' clocks were pretty popular, and were used to measure speed. A log was thrown in the water, and a rope with knots tied in it at some equal spacing was attached to it. As the ship pulled ahead, the rope payed out, and after X minutes (as determined by the hourglass) the number of knots was counted - and that was the ship's speed, in knots.

Combine this with compass heading, subtract drift caused by heeling force, and you've got a vector you can use for dead reckoning. It gets messed up by currents, but it's better than nothing.

Around the time of Columbus, they were just starting to experiment with accurate clocks used to measure longitude directly (i.e. with a good clock and a good table of sunset/sunrise, you can determine your longitude pretty accurately.) But clocks of the time sucked, and thus couldn't be used too far from shore. If you were close to port you could reset them based on land-based signals for time correction - but then, if you were close to shore you didn't really need a good means of detecting longitude.

But there was a way that you could reset your terrible clock by a universally visible and very accurate timing signal - a lunar eclipse. Columbus claimed that he used these eclipses to 'reset' his clock and thus derive an accurate determination of longitude. That claim was later disupted by scholars, who thought he just made it up to sound authoritative.

Funny side note - at one point someone proposed treating a pistol and a dog with a "powder of sympathy", shooting the dog, and then putting the wounded dog on the ship. At noon someone in London would put some more 'powder of sympathy' on one of the dog's old bandages, and the dog on the ship would howl in sympathy - thus allowing to reset their clocks. Needless to say it didn't work well.

It wasn't until the 1700's that they started taking the problem seriously. In the early 1700's, the English Parliament offered an award of several thousand pounds to someone who could solve the 'longitude problem.' Some people, like Hooke, had been working on this very problem for decades, and it seemed intractable. It resulted in a flurry of clock designs, including the one you mentioned - and these eventually solved the problem.

[billvon 3,131]

>Its cool because I heard that Gould himself is an atheist . . .

More of an agnostic, but a pretty spiritual one.

>It was well known that the world was round since the time of the ancient
>Greeks. (not sure what this has to do with the science/religion thing).

Yes, he used that as an example of someone starting a myth to bash religion, in the section on the odd science vs religion wars that start with some regularity. ("Those stupid religious types told everyone the earth was flat!") And while some did just that, they were far in the minority, even in Columbus's day.

[rehmwa 2]

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Creationists have been trying literally every angle since the turn of the last century to get religion taught in schools.

Disagree -

Creationists and secularist have both been trying to teach their version of "morals" in schools. Lately secularists have been more successful in the politics of making it standard curriculum and the end goal is recruitment, not teaching.

And I don't believe teaching 'religion' is the goal of the religious types. Again, it's not teaching going on here, it's 'recruiting' that's the intent. Again, secularists are winning that political battle.

If we were fair, matters of religion and morals would stay out of the schools and the parents only would provide that. Whether it's based on secular, moral, or a mix of the two would be up to the parents.

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Steel 0]

Funny side note - at one point someone proposed treating a pistol and a dog with a "powder of sympathy", shooting the dog, and then putting the wounded dog on the ship. At noon someone in London would put some more 'powder of sympathy' on one of the dog's old bandages, and the dog on the ship would howl in sympathy - thus allowing to reset their clocks. Needless to say it didn't work well.
==================================
How is this funny?

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If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass.
Can't think of anything I need
No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound.
Nothing to eat, no books to read.

[billvon 3,131]

>Creationists and secularist have both been trying to teach their version
>of "morals" in schools. Lately secularists have been more successful in
>the politics of making it standard curriculum and the end goal is
>recruitment, not teaching.

This is one of the fallacies that Gould discusses. Hence the principle of NOMA, which is that the two are not in conflict. Someone who finds the two separate (which most people do) has no problem teaching religion in a religious studies (or history) class and science in a science class. They are two separate subjects, both equally valid as areas of study.

Once someone believes that it is a "battle", and the end goal is to "recruit" people to either side - then they have moved from a logical to an emotional approach to the subject.

>And I don't believe teaching 'religion' is the goal of the religious types.

Don't confuse 'religious types' with creationists. There are plenty of religious people who work in the sciences and see no conflict between their beliefs and the work they do. It is only those extremists who think some sort of battle is going on who are attempting to "win one for their side." And if they can sneak the book of Genesis into a science class, they will do it, and chalk a victory up for their side. Their history has shown this, time and time again.

>If we were fair, matters of religion and morals would stay out of the
> schools and the parents only would provide that. Whether it's based on
> secular, moral, or a mix of the two would be up to the parents.

Matters of morals - agreed. Matters of religion - I see nothing wrong with studying religion. The history of England would make little sense if you removed religion. But I agree that proselytizing for a given religion has no place in schools.

[rehmwa 2]

I'm so completely in agreement with that last post that I have nothing confrontative to supply. But, I'll try - you dress funny and your car is a funny shape.

In fact, I'll go find that book.

have a good weekend

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[dorbie 0]

There's world of difference between calculating speed with a clock and using a clock to measure longitude directly. The latter requires accuracy and knowledge that the Earth was round, and that is of course the whole point, indirect measurements are irrelevant. At what time did sailors really start accepting that the Earth was round and trying to measure longitude? Sailors observed for centuries that tallship masts would appear before the ship as they crested the horizon. The claim that sailors navigated by sextant and clock is a claim out of context for what it implies about direct measurement of longitude and therefore the belief in longitude on a sphere. Use of a sextant though... I don't think the flat earth society would approve.

If Columbus was even close to measuring longitude on a sphere, he'd have had a clue of how big the Earth was and wouldn't have made his famous error, but maybe him trying explains it
Long after everyone knew the Earth was round they still couldn't acurately measure longitude directly using time and didn't navigate with sextant & clock in the way the original story implies. Harrison's watch (it was a spring driven watch not a pendulum driven clock and that was key to it's success, he tried making accurate clocks for years) was locked away for safekeeping even after it worked. Hooke was a jealous old bugger and wanted to win the prize with his astronomical tables (observations of the Moon I think) and he ran the "Board of Longitude" (Brilliant name!) that judged the competition (I think it was Hooke). It took another act of Parliament (or intervention of the King I forget which) to get Harrison's prize and it was years overdue. The Admiralty it their infinite wisdom took Harrison's watch and locked it up in a vault for fear that it was so valuable and intricate and couldn't be reproduced. So Harrison solved the prize but the problem didn't exactly go away when he solved it. It's worth noting (I think) that Hooke was a contemporary of Newton, I think this is the same Hooke who has some claim to be the progenitor of a planetary orbit being a moving object falling and missing (integration or Newton's fluctions hadn't been proposed at that time).

[billvon 3,131]

>At what time did sailors really start accepting that the Earth was round
>and trying to measure longitude?

Aristotle knew the earth was round; indeed, he stated the basis of latitude determination (that the stars change their apparent elevation) in ~400 BC. Navigation (i.e. sea voyages) have been recorded back as early as 3000 BC. Ptolemy published his masterpiece "Geography" around 100-150 BC, which clearly laid out the lines of latitude and longitude, and identified places with coordinates. So the knowledge of latitude/longitude, belief in the sphericity of the earth and the concept of sea navigation has been around for a long time. And I don't think it's much of a stretch to believe that sailors out of sight of land have _always_ wanted to know where they were, since the consequence of geting lost was often death by starvation.

As I mentioned above, for a while dead reckoning was used for longitude determination, supplanted by crude clocks synchronized to celestial events like lunar eclipses. If you know a lunar eclipse happened exactly 2 hours after sunset in Borneo, and it happened exactly 3 hours after sunset somewhere else along the same line of latitude, you know that you are 15 degrees longitude away from Borneo. And all you need for that is a clock that can count accurately for a few hours, instead of one that will keep time accurately to the minute for months (which is what you need to do unreferenced time-based navigation.)

>If Columbus was even close to measuring longitude on a sphere, he'd
>have had a clue of how big the Earth was and wouldn't have made his
>famous error . . .

Well, I think the biggest part of his error came from overreliance on Ptolemy's book, which showed Asia stretching to where California is.

[billvon 3,131]

> I'm so completely in agreement with that last post that I have nothing
> confrontative to supply.

What??!! What sort of a speaker's corner post is that?

>But, I'll try - you dress funny and your car is a funny shape.

That's better. Have a good weekend too, and remember - slow is fast!

[dorbie 0]

Bill, I made my objection clear that saying citing a clock as a navigational tool as it relates to roundness implies direct measurement, saying after that they used dead reckoning is a copout.. I agree there were some who theorized that the Earth was round, heck just look at Giordano Bruno, and the amazing views he held, I'm sure he wasn't unique. I'm of the opinion the educational standards and general opinion was a bit more diverse back then.

I don't think we actually disagree on this it's just an itneresting discussion.

[diverborg 0]

wow, I'm a little to drunk already, to understand this post. Yall have a good weekend I'm going to drink some more.

[jakee 1,609]

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>If we were fair, matters of religion and morals would stay out of the
> schools and the parents only would provide that. Whether it's based on
> secular, moral, or a mix of the two would be up to the parents.

Matters of morals - agreed. Matters of religion - I see nothing wrong with studying religion. The history of England would make little sense if you removed religion. But I agree that proselytizing for a given religion has no place in schools.

Well, its a nice idea but one persons useful information is anothers moral crusade.

Take the teaching of safe sex in schools. Look at it one way and its a sensible way of trying to stop the spread of STD's and underage pregnancy, look at it another way and its corrupting the morals of a nation and leading people to sin.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[peregrinerose 0]

I haven't read that particular book, but have read others by Gould and find him extremely interesting reading.

Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

[philh 0]

Bruno discussed a cosmology that was more in sync with modern sicence and what happened to him? He was executed by the church for heresy , anyone who says there is no confict between sceicne and religion does a disservice to his and other "herectics" memory.Of course there is a conflict becuase the bible and other religious texts give an account of creation and other elements of our history that is at odds with the scientific evidence. For example, the bible says the stars were created after the Earth but science says the oldest stars are several times older than Earth. Now its simple: either science is right or the bible is right, they cant both be right if the say opposite things. hence there is a conflict.
Incidentally most secularists do not object to religion being taught in school, what we object to is religion being taught as science. In my school we had a class called religious education where we given an objective educaiton on various different religions and their beliefs. Such beliefs had no place in biology classes, and rightly so.

[SpeedRacer 1]

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For example, the bible says the stars were created after the Earth but science says the oldest stars are several times older than Earth. Now its simple: either science is right or the bible is right, they cant both be right if the say opposite things. hence there is a conflict.

you're missing the point. they CAN both be right if they say different things, as long as they are answering different questions.

Speed Racer
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[Guest]

"I'm more interested in the Rock of Ages - than in the age of rocks!"

"Matthew Harrison Brady" in "Inherit the Wind.

mh

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"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

[philh 0]

But both science and religion claim to give an account fo creation, they are not different questions. If the biblical account of creation is wrong - and science most clearly states that it is. then the legitamcy of the bible falls apart.

[Zenister 0]

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then the legitamcy of the bible falls apart.

not really... true it destroys the fundamentalist assertion that it is the 'one true unadulterated word of God(TM)" but it doesnt change anything about the social 'truth' and utility of the morals it professes...

one of the main problems in modern christianity is the tendency to confuse 'the message' with the primitive cultural hang ups of 'the messengers' ie those who wrote and edited the bible and assert it is the only true representation of divinity...

it has been time for a 'new revision' of the christian bible for a long while now.... but doing so would undermine the power held but various Church structures world wide... so it wont happen... at least officially....

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[JohnMitchell 16]

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The whole "everyone told Columbus he was going to fall off the edge of the earth" thing is hooey. When you think about it, navigation by sextant and clock is impossible if you don't believe the earth is round - and there were plenty of ship's captains in Columbus's day who navigated by sextant and clock.

Actually the first shipborne clocks were still a couple of centuries away. Until then, captains navigated by latitude and guessed at their longitude. Many disasters happened because of that. The original 4 seagoing chronometers, H-1 thru H-4, are on display in Greenwich, England. They are arguably the most important clocks ever made. Fascinating story, really.

My opinion is that religion plays an obstructionist role in science until finally forced out of the way, then says that is doesn't really matter. You say that religion and science don't overlap. Well, they do, as science pushes back the boundaries of what were once religins domains. By teaching pat answers such as Creationism or Intelligent Design, religion once again sets itself up to be pushed out the way as science sheds more light on to what were once mysteries.

Oh, and by the way, Columbus was wrong and everyone else was right. He thought the Earth was much smaller than it actually is. That is why he thought he could reach the Far East by sailing a little ways West. Neat idea, but the Earth's size had already been determined accurately about 500 B.C. The information had just gotten lost during the dark ages.

[billvon 3,131]

> If the biblical account of creation is wrong - and science most clearly
> states that it is. then the legitamcy of the bible falls apart.

Not at all! Its legitimacy as a moral guide is independent of its validity as a science textbook.

We based a big chunk of our constitution on the writings of John Locke, Now, Locke was completely wrong about the "state of nature" of man being an idyllic paradise, but he made some other very good observations about any government arising from the power of the people, not the power of a monarch or a god. Just because he was wrong about one thing does not invalidate the rest of his work, or the part of our constitution that is based upon his work.

Locke did not have a good grounding in archaeology or anthropology, so he has a good excuse for not understanding how primitive societies operated. Similary, the authors of the bible did not have a good grounding in science or geography, so they can be forgiven for not understanding what was really going on.

There are plenty of other examples of this. Linus Pauling was wrong about vitamin C, but if you ignore his work on molecular biology because of that, you'd be missing an awful lot. Werner Heisenburg believed that only an authoritarian society could control Europe, and that democracy was doomed to failure. Even though he was wrong about that, it would be very foolish to ignore his work on quantum mechanics. He was a brilliant scientist but not much of a sociologist.

So unless you claim that the work of Locke, Heisenburg, and Bohr has no validity, you have to accept the premise that sometimes even very smart people make mistakes. And the bible surely makes a lot of them. But rejecting its message because it gets the science wrong is like rejecting quantum mechanics because Heisenburg got his politics wrong.

[JackC 0]

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Not at all! Its legitimacy as a moral guide is independent of its validity as a science textbook.

The Bible claims to be The Truth. Keeping only the moral bits and dismissing the science bits as the superstitious mumbo jumbo of a bunch of Bronze Age nomads is a very dubious position. Exactly what is it that makes the Bible a better moral guide than any other book?

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But rejecting its [the Bible's] message because it gets the science wrong is like rejecting quantum mechanics because Heisenburg got his politics wrong.

Rubbish. Heisenburg made no special pleading when he wrote down the uncertainty principle. He didn't claim an absolute truth just because his favourite sky pixie told him so through a burning blackboard.

On the other hand, the bible claims its truth exactly by special pleading. If the bits of the Bible that can be verified are found to be false (and they are) then how can you believe the bits you can't verify?