Neil deGrasse Tyson is a respected Astrophysicist and educator. Here, (turn down your speakers) he gives his insights on religious people, and the scientific-elite.

His claim:

There are 7% of elite-level scientists who are religious (believe in God) and Tyson claims that until that number is zero, the general (non-elite) public should not be berated for their religious beliefs.

My interpretation:

His premise seems to be that if there are elite-level scientists who mistakenly believe in God, there will naturally be layman who also mistakenly believe in God, since knowledge of God's non-existence corresponds to your knowledge and expertise of the natural sciences. Therefore, religious "layman" should not be criticized for their belief in God, as long as there are religious "elite" making the same error.

My question is if people agree with his premise, that the knowledge and belief (or more accurately - disbelief) in God, objectively depends on your expertise in these fields. Or is he mistakenly making the assumption that the knowledge of God (or Atheism) hinges on this expertise?

Any and all thoughts on this would be appreciated, including if I've misinterpreted his premise. I would like to know how some of you view this.

Credentials are nice as a reference, and is a big part of how you view scientific credibility. It does not make people magical overlords on all things life. There have been many brilliant minds with bat**** crazy ideas. Per this logic we should not debate against those ideas with others untill these brilliant minds have changed opinions.

And before anyone religious jumps on my head and screams "you only say this because you are irrelligious", remember than Tyson is also implicitly saying you should not debate your religious ideals if what you debate against is believed by one of these people.

I also have to mention that I have aquintances I find to be brilliant in their field, but who has many views I find relatively naive. For some (far from all of course) rising to the top in a field is often paid with a narrow field of vision.

And lastly (but probably most important of all): Many of these 7% disagree on a lot. A lot. I think the world is going to stop if the rest of us can't as well.

Looks like my thread is failing nicely.

Thanks for the input t_d, interesting point about the differences among the 7%, I would like to know the actual stats on that. I don't think Tyson is at all concerned with the differences, just that they are making, what he considers, a great error given their knowledge.

I'm still curious on what the consensus is on the knowledge of God being equated with an expertise in the natural sciences, as Tyson seems to imply. Does being an expert in physics and math really give you insights on religion that laymen are not privy to? What is it about mastering these fields that would give someone an edge over someone who has not mastered these fields, but may still be knowledgeable in them?

The implied argument is that God isn't necessary, and that most scientists know this very well.

To the extent that part of a modern religious experience involves grappling with the intersection between faith and science, or a religious worldview and a naturalistic worldview, an understanding of physics and math or other similar fields should be useful.

On the other hand, if we're talking about having an experience of God, or about purity of heart, the cultivation of virtue, wisdom, love, joy, humility, and etc, then no, it doesn't matter. None of these things is a specialization dependent on education, or even intelligence

Yeah, I basically agree with Tyson.

What's humorous about the Tyson quote here is that physical scientists believe in existence of many more "invisible" things than the ordinary religious people do. So why would they be criticizing other people for believing in that in the first place? He should stick to science education.

There is a difference in soundness between believing your house is affected by gravity and believing it is haunted.

Yes, but do you need go be an elite-scientist to know this? To me it's like needing to be a formula 1 driver to know anything about cars. It seems like overkill to need to be an elite-scientist to understand the arguments against God.

I can grant you your premise here, but I'm not sure that this understanding needs to be at an elite level for you to be qualified.

Thoughts on my above replies?

John Lennox speaks about this in this brief video, although I don't believe he would claim that the irreligious group believes (has faith) in more things.

An "elite" physicist might say that the house has dark energy or dark matter in it or that it really has 11 dimensions or that it also exists in a parallel universe or that that the house is really composed of tiny "strings" or that at a quantum level it is uncertain that it really exists. These are all modern physics beliefs as far as I know. Then he'll say "Btw How can you believe in something that you can't see like a personal God?" . Good luck with that.

Yes, you are right. Just to be sure we should avoid painting it on the sabbath and hang up an idol to Ganesha on the front porch. Human sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli might also be considered.

These are, after all, things expected from us by personal gods, and it would be absurd to disbelieve these things and simultanously accept that some mathematical models seemingly correspond with observation.

Bit of a straw argument, don't you think? You're reducing complex scientific theories that have taken decades to formulate into some kind of blind belief. Dark matter, the multiverse, string theory - these weren't just made up out of fear and superstition, they are advanced mathematical conclusions based on evidence. You're welcome to look up the equations. I don't understand them, nor do I pretend to, but the fact that anyone who can disprove any of those theories categorically will likely receive a Nobel Prize makes me trust the scientific process a lot more than boogeyman stories.

Actually....



http://science.nationalgeographic.co...e/dark-matter/


So what your're saying is....

Oh yea, we know it exists but we haven't ever seen it. BTW, there's def no god...bc we've never seen him

I think it's true that many concepts from physics have a certain mystery, especially ontologically, and an analogy can be drawn between that mystery and the mysteriousness of God.

But tame_deuces is still right that those concepts serve a purpose within physics, and have an empirical basis, which doesn't really have an analogy in theology. Even the snippet quoted points that out. Dark matter and energy are posited because of observation, it's just not known what exactly the observed phenomena is. But in a certain way, it's not that much different from asking exactly what a photon is.

The invisibility of God is not like that.

I think some of this is valid, but I also think you're picking up the objection later than necessary with regards to reasoning. I'd like to quote a point that Lennox makes in the video I posted earlier, I think it's relevant. I paraphrased it for space.

"God is not necessary" is not the same thing as "God doesn't exist". "We haven't yet encountered something that looks totally unexplainable with out God" is even less equivalent to "God doesn't exist". So atheists are morons.

On the other hand there are almost no theists who are willing to admit that there so far appears to be nothing going on that, while it might be caused by God, need not be. So they're morons too.

"God is not necessary" and "God doesn't exist" for all practical purposes is equivalent.
In science, if something is not necessary (can not be observed or measured as influencing anything) then there is no reason to postulate its existence. For example. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is unnecessary - it hasn't been shown to influence anything - so why postulate its existence?

You wouldn't.

However. Substitute The Flying Spaghetti Monster for a different word, let's say "God" and all of a sudden, there is a reason to postulate its existence....

There is no reason to suspect that the likelihood of God existing is any higher than the likelihood of an orbiting tea pot existing - a tea pot that influences nothing; is invisible to all measurements and; has continued to orbit the earth since its formation.

Per this logic I am also a moron for not believing magical goblins run the engine of my car, so I can only say thank you.

I'm confused. Surely you don't think that sight is the only acceptable form of empirical evidence?

I don't think Tyson is saying the bolded. It is possible that he thinks only scientists are qualified to do original research on whether god exists, but that is different from knowing what conclusions scientists who have done that research have concluded.

However, that way of putting it is kind of artificial. Scientists generally haven't done scientific research on whether god exists because that claim isn't part of a well-formulated scientific hypothesis that can be tested (at least, I'm guessing this is Tyson's view). This is why Tyson talks about being mathematically literate, and knowing how to do scientific experiments, etc. What he probably means is that being able to recognize what is or is not a scientific hypothesis is part of the training to be a scientist and so it isn't really the fault of those who haven't received that training that they can't identify the errors in the hypothesis that god exists.

You seem to be looking for someone to be the source of all things/events that are going on/happeing currently and in lacking to find anything conclude that there is no God. This comes from the belief that everything happened by complete accident.

When you look at life and existence itself and everything that is happening in the universe as God then God is all around you, the evidence is everywhere. In fact, you realize that you are just part of the universe happening. The same way an apple and a leaf may appear to be separate, but they are both part of the same tree. The trees may appear to be separate but they are part of the earth. The planets may appear to be separate but they are part of the solar system...galaxies....universe. In seeing yourself as something completely separate from everything else, and a complete accident it would be hard to view it this way.

That's not my belief, I was just paraphrasing the basic atheist argument against the possibility of God.

No you're not.

None of this in any way leads to a conclusion that there is a god. Unless you are pre-defining god as "everything" ( by looking at everything that is happening in the universe as god), in which case , nice circular reasoning.

Knowing that you are not separate , but are intimately linked with everything, does not lead to the conclusion "therefore, god"

Even if we accept this as god, then it still a huuuuuuuuge leap to get to a god of any religion, or to be able to say anything about what god wants, or even what god actually is ( other than just a meaningless "god is everything" statement).