The only vague notions of God that may be compatible with science ensure that God is essentially irrelevant to both our understanding of nature and our actions based on it.
Until we are willing to accept the world the way it is, without miracles that all empirical evidence argues against, without myths that distort our comprehension of nature, we are unlikely to bridge the divide between science and culture and, more important, we are unlikely to be fully ready to address the urgent technical challenges facing humanity.
—Lawrence Krauss, An Update on C. P. Snow’s “Two Cultures”
Yup.
I am not sure I agree with the first paragraph but then I don’t know what I’d offer to counter it either. I agree with the second. There is no evidence to support the belief that God is going to fix our messes so to rely on that concept could be disasterous. Though some religious types creepishly look forward to all kinds of apocolyptic scenarios.
Point. I might quibble with the “…and our actions based on it” part of the first paragraph. But certainly the regularity of the observable universe and its laws gives little room to an interventionist conception of God, and leaves it as a appendix-like metaphysical hypothesis without force or effect in the scientific paradigm.
Wow. This is exactly what I’m going to be doing in my PhD program. I have a master’s degree in science and various undergrad degrees in social science and humanities. I’m interested in the intersection of science and humanities, and how that trickles down into the culture at large (especially given the increasing scientization/medicalization of society). Thanks for posting this, Daniel!
:)
The only gods compatible with scientific understanding are functionally meaningless. Theologians enthroned in ivory towers throw a smokescreen of arguments for a god that no one believes in.
“Theologians enthroned in ivory towers” are people, too!
…and a comparatively insignificant proportion of the population.
Besides, they don’t believe it, either.
Every person is a “comparatively insignificant proportion of the population”, and I imagine if you were able to surgically remove and compare the God images from peoples’ heads, no two would be really similar.
And Paul Tillich will so slap you from the grave.
totally agree. I remember talking to a morman who spoke of her “heavenly father” as if we all knew exactly what she meant by her father. When I said – what do you mean by “heavenly father”? she looked at me with such shock and surprise that I didn’t know what she was referring to. It was her own personal god and her own personal idea of what god was…how could I not know what she was referring to????
I disagree. Perhaps if you look into details, yes, they differ; but vast swaths of the population believe in the same god.
Most Christians have roughly the same conception of God, for instance: he is omnipotent, benevolent, cares about humanity, incarnated himself as a man named Jesus, vengeful, jealous, etc. In a broad and accurate sense, Muslims and Presbyterians worship the same deity, though their conceptions of his attributes and personality differ greatly.
But to the extent that we can trust our senses, which is all we have to go on, that can’t be. The only gods compatible with a scientific understanding of nature are essentially irrelevant.
“roughly the same conception of God” is a pretty broad term. I have several brothers and sisters, all raised the same, that differ on whether God would create something in vain. Half believe we are the sole purpose of the universe and all those trillions of galaxies out there * are just worthless hydrogen gas * that serve no purpose other than to be something pretty for us to look at….even the galaxies we cannot see as of now.
Quote me from her on after:
At some point in time God will be compatible with science and the origin of the universe will be known.
Lawrence Krauss always makes me happy to be an alum of Case Western Reserve.