Some theists, not all. That's the issue that people disagree with you on.

There is also the issue that science can be seen as instrumental or pragmatic, and then you don't judge science on whether it is true, but whether it is useful. Under such a view it is actually irrelevant if a personal belief directly conflicted with the model, as long as the scientific practitioner accepts that the model can solve problems. Both pragmatism and instrumentalism are common philosophies of science among scientists.

Theists who don't have a problem with god being pushed back to a vague, first cause, non-interventionist, creator role, are basically Deists.

What matters is not how science is viewed as a methodology, or assumption, or truth claim, or whatever, but how the knowledge and explanations it produces are viewed.

And how many theists agree with the science that prayer has no effect? That's not 'some theists', it's 'most' if not virtually all..

And you haven't addressed my point about how science is now positing a creation that doesn't require god at all, that is going to pose a conflict for every theist on the planet.

Well, deism is a sub-category of theism so that objection is rather moot. I know some in everyday parlor use theism to mean only belief in revealed gods, but that is inaccurate. Theism in the broad and technical sense only means belief in god(s). And even people who believe in such revealed gods can certainly hold personal beliefs that are not in conflict with the currently assumed laws of nature. Many large denominations of Judaism, for example, make a point out of evolving the religion in conjunction with other knowledge - and argue that is what religion should be.

You're narrowing the concept of theism down to a very specific set of beliefs, which is a bad approach. It's a bit like saying "cars are red" and then pointing to all the red cars to argue your case.

And "science" isn't positing this. Science isn't one unanimous thing that speaks with one voice. Rather the opposite, science exists pretty much in a constant state of disagreement and competing statements. Which makes sense, we wouldn't have much need for scientists if there was only consensus.

But all theists are not deists... the vast majority believe in something more than just a non-interventionist, first cause power, but even theists who are happy to accept that are now being asked to resolve a new conflict between the new naturalistic idea that something can come from nothing, and the idea that god created everything.

Ultimately, god loses out virtually everytime science provides an accepted explanation, because there is an inherent conflict between science and theism. Eventually science could explain even the origin of the universe, there will no longer even be room for god and he'll vanish in a puff of naturalism.

This is just splitting hairs. There is a scientific hypothesis, a scientist is working on developing it, it does and will pose the biggest conflict of all for theism.

It's certainly no secret that scientific discovery often treads in venues of knowledge often inhabited by religious belief, and that it leaves little room for those religious beliefs.

But that's on a case to case basis. To say that religion is incompatible with science simply isn't true. A single case of that not happening is proof enough. The same goes for theism and science.

Many believers are happy to explore the universe and nature and evolve their religion if it needs to be. That is not "giving up" or "being stubborn". For these people the religion or personal beliefs in god were probably never seen as perfect to begin with.

And to be frank, that's the healthy approach. Any atheist should approach science in the same way. It's not like we are somehow exempt from holding beliefs we need to adjust as science progresses, nor are our beliefs necessarily less stubborn.


No, I don't agree that it is splitting hairs. "Science tells us" is an over-used cliché. It's not always wrong to use, especially when we known the consensus is huge, but it is wrong to use when we are in conjenctural or less supported territory.

You wouldn't be happy if I said "science tells us string theory is correct". But there is certainly scientists that hold string theory to be solid, and they can be credentialed and accomplished.

And there is no scientific consensus on the existence or non-existence of god(s). For the most part, science ignores the issue. Those who do pick it up, mostly do it outside their scientific day-job. And the act of doing that, I can tell you right now, is a hot topic in science itself.

And then there is the over-aching issue. If you weaponize science in theological debate, you're going to hurt science. Nuance and discretion is needed. Pick a fight with YECs, I don't have an issue with that. But for beliefs that are open-minded and accepting of science? There is no fight there. Heck, if people who believe in things like YEC shift over to views like that, I'd say you've done both science and religion a huge favor.

Science may be completely wrong in ignoring the 'supernatural', but that doesn't change that it's in conflict with anyone whose belief system includes a belief in the supernatural. You can't hold contradictory beliefs.

Religious scientists don't think that they're holding contraidctory beliefs, they somehow manage to compartmentalise their beliefs but that's a fudge that won't hold science back forever. Are you following the 'boundary condition' hypothesis by Hawking and Hartle? If it achieves the status of 'theory', theists are going to have two choices, to ignore it as they ignore other scientific explanations that contradict theistic explanations, or push god even further back to some role he played before there was even a nothing for something to come from. God is in infinite regress and that's logically impossible.


lol, you think science isn't already being 'hurt'? There's a war going on that you seem to be completely unaware of. You think religious objections to science ended with the last person to be burned alive for contradicting religious explanations? These two paradigms are mutually exclusive and one of them is going to 'win' in the end. Currently, it's looking like science will prevail.

You continue to assert this, but it's just a naked assertion. And it's not even in alignment with reality.

No. It doesn't do this at all. This is an example of how people that aren't scientifically and philosophically literate take science and philosophy to mean things to mean things that they don't mean, and start promoting conclusions that don't make a lot of sense. All it basically says is that they're allowing the time parameter to be imaginary in order to complete a calculation. There's no inherent interpretation of what that means, and you're overstating the conclusion.

You've also once again introduced this idea of "theory status" as if it's some sort of formalized concept. That somehow, if a scientific theory checks off enough stuff from your list of randomly capitalized words, that it somehow becomes a theory. That's not how it works.

Or the war mostly exists in your head.

There are religious challenges to science all the time. But that doesn't mean there's a war. There are also scientific challenges to science happening all the time, and that's not considered a war. There are scientific discoveries that contradict other scientific discoveries all the time. There have been scientific "theories" that have been overruled by more data and more science. The shifting of ideas over time is natural. The challenging of ideas spurs growth in knowledge.

You also hold up being "burned alive" as some sort of special status about science. You realize people got burned alive for all sorts of things in the past, right? The particular animosity you think is held between science and religion isn't really there. I'm not aware of anyone burned alive specifically and strictly for their scientific contributions.

Your delusion is clear in both of these sentences. You've failed to make a successful argument about what it means for paradigms to be mutually exclusive in any way that fits with reality. And you also seem to think that "science" is the only future of thought.

But go ahead and write your own science fiction novella in your head. Nobody can stop you from doing it. Just make sure that at some point you return to reality.

For someone who clearly is fairly intelligent, you sure are thick-headed and obtuse. How many times does it have to be explained to you that you
are completely wrong on this assertion. Reading your posts can be worse
than banging one's head against a brick wall.

1) "I believe that god exists and created the universe"

2) "I believe that electricity is caused by the movement of electrons"

These 2 beliefs are not contradictory and are not in conflict.

No, not really. I can't see this conflict that you describe, and I can't help to think that if you had experience with actual science you would see it yourself.

a) I wrote my bachelor thesis with a missionary, who was absolutely brilliant and very hardworking. Full of awesome ideas, initiative and our research was praised for being original and very interesting in scope.
b) When I did my MsC I studied together with a a man who in his spare time was a youth minister. Very full of life, an awesome tutor and very good presenter of science.
c) I later worked with an evangelical as a close colleague. Extremely knowledgeable in diverse fields, extreme hard worker. We both bonded over our love and respect of physics. Many a physics theory were butchered by over lunch-breaks as we tried to 1-up each-other.
d) I play tennis with a pastor's son, a firm believer. He has a master in political science, and is an expert on quantitative / empirical methods in the soft sciences. He loves crunching models. He likes debating ethics, roman writers and lamenting the lack of rigor in many current papers.

According to you these people shouldn't be doing science or they are somehow being dishonest.

You're wrong, and that's pretty much all there is to it.

Solely because by the time science had advanced to the point that we even knew there was such a thing as an electron, no one had explained that god made them move, but what happened every time a scientific explanation contradicted an existing theist explanation?

That's an example of a specific issue being in conflict though but it's indicative of how there's a conflict generally. The two paradigms can't co-exist peacefully even when they fail to rub up against each other, the next conflict is always just around the corner. "I'll consider this to be true right up until it contradicts this other truth I know for sure is true" doesn't work....

Ok. Continue to live in the belief that these two paradigms can peacefully co-exist despite hundreds of years of evidence to the contrary and a total denial of the conflict that is raging around you.

In the meantime, I hope that science wins this war, it's going well so far, and that superstitous nonsense like christianity and islam etc is banished to the realms of 'can you believe we ever thought that was true' as so much other theistic nonsense has been. It's scientific explanations that will achieve that.

And what makes you think I don't have experience with science? lol. And look at you, depending on personal experience again...

Yes, look at me. Having studied and done actual scientific research with skilled and capable religious fellows. Certainly this should be irrelevant when debating your claim that religion and science is incompatible.

I know very well from your writings in the last few weeks that it is very unlikely that you have actual experience with science and probably hold little to no formal education in method. Your opinions on science is pretty much verbatim the kind you get from sources like rationalwiki, not actual science departments.

Your overreliance on personal experience is massively undermining your credibility with me, you don't know all scientists, you haven't done all science in all ways, you have a snap shot limited personal experience and you would totally ignore someone who supported ID using the exact same type of evidence. You know some people who are managing to compartmentalise two different types of knowledge, and it works right up until one directly contradicts the other, until they conflict with each other, and then they have to face that conflict and decide whether they want to have knowledge that assumes god, or knowledge that doesn't, because you can't have both simultaneously.

I understand the epistemelogical difference between MN and PN, and between PN and non-naturalistic paradigms, but what I don't think you consider is that both theism and science seek to explain our reality, the one reality, and you can't seperate the two types of knowledge in practical terms and have both. Scientific knowledge is fine with theists right up to the point where it contradicts their 'god' knowledge, and then it's one or the other.

So, according to the bolded, the knowledge produced by science either directly conflicts with some other beliefs held by theists or they don't conflict with theism. You have still failed to provide evidence for your claim that theism and science are mutually exclusive.

Who cares what is acceptable to the majority of theists? You have claimed that theism is mutually exclusive with science, not that some other views held by the majority of theists are mutually exclusive with science.

Sure, I can agree that for most theists, naturalistic explanations that replace the agency of god can be problematic. Not mutually exclusive, but problematic, sure.

So what you're saying is that eventually theists will have to rely on faith rather than philosophical or scientific arguments to believe in a god. Hmmm...

Here's my view. For millenia, philosophers and theologians have attempted to provide evidence for the existence of a god, primarily through philosophical proofs such as the First Cause and Design arguments. Today, these arguments have lost a lot of their intuitive force because we are now aware of alternative explanations for what was being explained by god in these arguments. But giving up these arguments doesn't imply that god doesn't exist. It only implies that these particular line of evidence for god don't work. Thus, insofar as science shows that these arguments fail, they don't show that science and theism are mutually exclusive.

Now, it is true that many naturalists adopt some version of evidentialism, saying that you should only accept as true claims those which are based on (natural) evidence. This view does conflict in some sense with theism. However, it is not implied by science. You can accept all the conclusions and methodology of science, while still believing that it is fine to accept some beliefs that aren't based on evidence, or that some kinds of evidence is non-naturalistic.

Everybody who makes any knowledge claim must have at least one belief that they accept without evidence. Otherwise, there is an infinite regress issue.

Here is a short dialogue:

Lucy: "I believe X."
Desi: "Why do you believe X?"
Lucy: "I believe X because of Y and Z."
Desi: "Why do you believe Y and Z?"
Lucy: "I believe Y and Z because of A, B and C."
Desi: "Why do you believe A, B and C?"
Lucy: "I believe A, B and C because of D, E, F and G"
......etc. etc. etc.

No chain of reasoning would ever end if every belief had to be justified by some other belief. At some point some belief has to be held as "axiomatic", else it would be impossible to ever conclude anything at all.

Or, am I wrong about this? Do tell.

This is correct, as I understand it

Perhaps the problem is how I'm using 'mutually exclusive'. English and Chinese are not mutually exclusive in that they can both exist as languages, people can speak either without ever having a problem, but what happens if you try to use both at the same time? Now there's a conflict, you can't use both simultaneously, and it's the same with explanations provided by science and religion. Everytime a scientific explanation meets something for which there's already a religious explanation, there's a conflict, it's not possible for them to ever agree. In that sense, they are mutually exclusive.


Funny Not just that they will have to rely on faith, as they always have, but to understand that faith and sicence are two entirely different means of acquiring and understanding knowledge about the reality of our universe. You can't accept two explanations for the same thing as true. God made the universe, or he didn't, and science will never accept that he did, it can't, so any scientific explanation for the universe is always going to be in conflict with any religious explanation.

Science doesn't just require evidence.

It's not correct as I understand it. A belief should be justified and true, at the very least imo, and if you can't show why it's true, then you can't believe it... you certainly can't 'know' it if it isn't true, and you have to have good reason to believe it true, you can't just 'take it on faith' without any evidence. That's not knowing, that's guessing.

Did you even read what he wrote? He is correct that, if you take the "chain of belief" back far enough you reach a belief that you have to take as axiomatic, ie without proof.

Try it.

So, if God really did make the universe, then Bible-believers like me are right, and the atheist scientists are wrong? So, it's at least possible that "science" is wrong and theism is true?

(For the record, I believe that when each are properly understood, both science and the Bible should always be compatible.)

Based on my past experience with MB, he did not.

You seem to have confused "knowledge" and "belief" here.

Sure you can. People believe all sorts of things that they can't show is true. For example, you believe that there's an inherent conflict between theism and science. You haven't shown this is true, and in fact the claim is shown to be demonstrably false. But you continue to believe.

This would comport with the definition that you had attempted to put forward with your discussion of irrationality in another thread, and the discussion that follows shows how you've failed to really understand the implications of the structure you tried to establish.

You seem to not have a good sense of what a "belief" is based on both your current and past presentations.

Okay, if all you mean to claim is that when theistic scientists do science, they aren't bringing in their theistic assumptions, fine, I don't have a problem with that. To me, this is like saying that when chefs cook food, they aren't bringing in their theistic assumptions. True! But, I wouldn't say on that basis that cooking food is "mutually exclusive" with theism. Or, I could say that a scientist that loves the New York Yankees doesn't bring this fandom into his work as a scientist, but I wouldn't say on that basis that being a baseball fan is "mutually exclusive" with science or with being a scientist.

My guess is that most theists, certainly most theistic scientists understand and agree that faith and science are two entirely different means of acquiring knowledge about the reality of our universe.

Science will never accept that vanilla is better than chocolate ice cream. Therefore, any person who claims that vanilla is better than chocolate is in conflict with science.

Alternatively, science either hasn't or can't explain all things, including if someone made the universe, and so people who believe that someone did make the universe are not in conflict with science, they just go beyond what science has or can tell us about this issue. But since science doesn't claim to be the only way to justifiably believe something (that is a more controversial philosophical claim), I don't see a conflict there.

I just don't see why you can't be satisfied with the claim that eg science is in conflict with people who believe Genesis is literally true. There is a clear disagreement there. This attempt to find a disagreement between theism simpliciter and science just seems like an overreach.

Cooks, baseball players, linguists, ice cream flavour lovers, are not providing explanations for the reality in which we all live that conflict with each other. That's what science and theism are doing.

Just because there may be some theists for whom science has yet to come up with an explanation that conflicts with one of their theistic beliefs doens't mean that it can't happen, it can. The ultimate example, because it's the ultimate hiding place for god, is the origin of the universe, not TBB, but what came before that, and now there's a scientific theory being worked on that seeks to explain that, without god. First cause might be the best argument theists are ever going to have.

What are all the theists who have grudgingly accepted TBB going to do when their explanation that god must have caused the TBB is now being contradicted by yet another scientific explanation that is in direct conflict with that? That doesn't require god?

And if science had a definition of 'better' that met all the relevant criteria then yes, it could show that chocolate is better than vanilla.