Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron W.
Gould's NOMA position is fairly well known, and has been adopted by many Christians, especially the academically-minded ones. I don't know whether it has been "accurately" adopted (in that I don't know how many people have actually read the essay carefully and have thought through their own view deeply enough to argue that they hold precisely Gould's NOMA -- I include myself in this group), but at least there is a notion out there that roughly resembles it on the surface.
I think the basic premise that many religious people hold is that science does not have the capacity to ascribe meaning or value to objects. There is nothing in science that can say that a person is "worth" anything at all. (Well, I suppose an economist can do that, but even then it's a tongue-in-cheek sort of thing because I don't think anyone would seriously think of establishing a person-cash exchange rate.) For religious people, these types of statements find their source in their religion.
(BTW - I think that "religious person" is better than "theist" in this context. I recognize that the essay restricts religions to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, but I think that the question of meaning is also given by other religious persuasions and also by non-theistic religions as well.)
To expand on this a little further, within my understanding of NOMA I know of two distinct views.
One is science and religion are not only non-overlapping, but non-interfacing. That is, whatever science says is completely independent of whatever religion says. I believe this view is inappropriate.
The other is that they do not intersect, but they do interact. That is, scientific knowledge has the capacity to feed religious understanding, and religious understanding can impact scientific knowledge. The distinction here is not so much that religious ideals are placed INTO science, but rather religious ideas become a DRIVER for science.
Science is a human pursuit, directed by human efforts. We can choose to research bombs or we can choose to research cures for diseases. The idea that religious ideals can become a driver for science comes down along the notion of social justice. Science, on its own merits, is value-neutral. The value is instilled by the scientists who do the work. So it can be said that religious ideals can drive science insofar as the scientists attempt to steer the scientific work towards things which help to accomplish and establish particular religious ideals (such as social justice).
In the same way, religious ideals can be a driver for scientific ethics (an often overlooked area within scientific research).
These ideals are (of course) not unique to religions, nor consistent among them. But coming from the perspective of a religious person (of my particular background), it's completely unavoidable.