Non-overlapping magisteria

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Should Faith and Science just leave each other the hell alone?
do they and should they cover different ground.
this is what my coreligionist Steve Jay Gould seems to say.
[[[[Link to Goulds Paper]]]]

What do you think?

There is faith and their is faith. Faith1 is reasonable expectation based on actual experience. Faith2, the kind that the religious have is faith devoid of any empirical support whatsoever. Faith2 is belief that things are not what they are or could be other than what they are. That is flat out insanity.

If that disappeared the human race would better for it. No more crusades. No more Jihad.

ruveyn

In the way that Gould is talking about NOMA, I like what he is saying. I have a bit of a problem when some of less sophisticated thinkers insist that NOMA means that religion cannot have an opinion on science or that religious people ought to leave it alone. Such statements are usually made in ignorance of the work of Lamaitre and others like him.

Having been raised a Catholic, religion and science never really seemed in conflict with one another. Evolution was a fact and life went on. It was really that simple then. The first people I met who disagreed with me were fundamentalists who had a go at me for believing in evolution and the age of the universe. I pointed out that our religion is predicated on the belief that the Jews did not get the messiah they expected but they got what they needed, why should we expect to get the universe any different? I then proceeded to ignore most of these people. Then I ran into the naturalists, people who basically are the exact opposite. They in principle reject evidence for God and deny that science can reach that conclusion. It basically means that if one of them found strong evidence for God and could reproduce the event for the entire planet, they would not reach the conclusion 'God exists'. I find this position close minded also.

Religion in my view can have an opinion on science. Especially in the area of the philosophy of science. Prof. John Lennox of Oxford, a mathematician by trade, but still a bit of a polymath, is fond of Whitehead's Thesis... Which is a very basic religious history of science that claims that it the monotheistic conception of a rational God that assisted in the development of science, a conclusion that sits very uncomfortably with atheists. Then there is the work of people like Alvin Plantinga, whose work on proper function has been very good and Christians continue to make major contributions to the philosophy of science; especially in the field of epistemology.

"Reasonable Expectation" inferred from previous experiences is based on a belief in the theories of probably, which are based on blind faith in "chance" and "randomness".

I mentioned previously that randomness is self-contradictory, a very unpopular observation of "fact", since Modern Science places this God above all others. A "detestable" assertion of this fact might result in banishment, if not promptly retracted, but facts are facts.

A mere "fender-bender" mention is in "The Mathematical Experience" by Philip J. Davis & Reuben Hersh (1999), page 167 (paperback): "Now comes the shocker. It has been established by Joseph Doob that there are no sequences that are random in the sense of von Mises. The requirement is logically self-contradictory." versus
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/69773 ... dont-exist

What THE ....! !! !
http://www.glennshafer.com/assets/downl ... appear.pdf

It is a fact that it is just another belief, and popular doesn't mean true, especially with self-contradiction.

Tadzio

Richard is the smarter brother.