http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...-and-evidence/

Tim Crane is a professor of philosophy at Cambridge. He self-identifies as an atheist in this article. I find his thoughts run parallel to many of thoughts presented by the theists regarding the question of evidence.

Regarding his intentions with the article:

Regarding the natures of science and religion:

I think this article is a fairly reasonable approach to the question of science and religion. It will not compel any non-religious people to become religious, nor the other way around. Instead, it stands as an analysis of the purpose of each, and addresses the question of how they stand relative to each other:

Yes, it is, but...

That's kind of the crux of the issue, and when religion makes claims that are explicitly false from an empirical standpoint and force people to choose between science and religion, that's a problem. And despite what some in the religious crowd claim, it is not a two-way street. Even people like Sam Harris, who is frequently accused of scientism for his foray into an attempt to develop a neuroscientific basis for ethics, at least tries to combine himself to empirical facts.

If people could limit their irrationalities to things which actually don't have an answer (for the time being), I wouldn't care. A lot of people, however, can't, and pretty much ruin it for everyone.

Just nitpicking, but calling yourself an atheist because you reject Christianity is narrow minded.

Most religious practice in the West is focused around the meaning of life question and morality. Tough subjects to come up with absolute answers for and I have a hard time ascribing the term irrational to how most religious people in Western Civilization approach those subjects or lead their lives for the most part. If someone wants to say Grace before they eat or declare Jesus their Savior, that's their business and it really has no impact on my life, or as far as I'm concerned, society as a whole.

The theological debates, where there may be some truth elements, are pretty much unknown to the bulk of people who practice religion. Go into any church and you'll be hard pressed to find many that have heard of the kalam cosmological argument or Plantinga's ontological argument, let alone be able to understand them. But at the end of the day, it's just debate, however heated it may become.

Don't misunderstand me, I don't begrudge people's private beliefs. Just because something is irrational doesn't mean it's immoral. In some ways, I envy the sublime experience many religious people feel. But many people's religious beliefs seem to require that they actively try to impinge on my or other people's freedom, and that is not OK.

I'm glad that somebody else sees science and religion as different ways of approaching certain issues and not being in diametric opposition to one another as so many others believe.

as are astrology and numerology.
When the refuting starts to go in the other direction, then we may need to consider them as not only different attempts but different attempts of some merit.

According to the author, what's really central to religion is the Wittgensteinian view (it's all about meaningfulness and a way of life) but religions also rest on the truth of certain empirical propositions. Some of these can even be necessary. ("Religions do make factual and historical claims, and if these claims are false, then the religions fail")

Seems like a reasonable view to me.

What I don't quite get is this:
I wish he would have elaborated more on this. Is there a method other than the scientific one to evaluate the plausibility of factual, historical claims?

He's also saying that people should understand this when they criticize religion:
Is this a normative claim, ie is Tim Crane's conception of religious claims as explained in this article what people should consider religion to be?

Or is this how most theists actually think about their religion? Perhaps some of our theists can comment on whether he is right.

I reject this for the following reason: Astrology and numerology are predictive in the same sense as science.

Both astrology and numerology attempt to do precisely this, and this is different from what religion is pursuing.

FWIW - I view all astrology/religion parallels to be strawmen. To think they are the same reveals a level of ignorance about the practice of one or the other.

I think it's normative. Certainly most theists I know wouldn't approach their religion in this way in any concsious sense, though they would have a vague category of religious beliefs which 'wouldn't matter' if they turned out wrong and some which would (and which they think couldn't possibly be false).

lol. They're not parallels to science, religion or baking. They all claim certain things about the human condition, or history, or the future. I'm a former catholic who's best friend is a numerologist with a disgustingly large following ( in the hundreds) of successful people in a wide variety of fields in north america and western europe. The issues he deals with are very similar to the ones a priest does with his flock and at the same level.
For those unfamiliar with the topic, at a simple level it deals with the influence the mysterious force of numbers has on our lives, our emotions and our choices, with insight into how to work with that mysterious force to obtain better outcomes, to become a better person, a changed person more in tune with themselves, and so on. I suspect you're thinking of it as a method of picking lottery tickets or some such. now, that would be a strawman.

He is advocating that people should attempt to understand religion before criticizing it, and that this is his attempt to understand religion. It's not clear whether he think this is the way people *SHOULD* understand religion, but he thinks it's better than the way that Dawkins is doing it.

A strongly fundamentalist would say that science needs to be viewed through the lens of religion. But many Christians would disagree.

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.)

You should be careful about how you attempt to characterize religion. Because what you have said:

Is what many secular scientists are trying to do as well. So the process you have described isn't exactly a religious one, but rather just a broad description of the human condition.

(Edit: It's implicit when I say "many" but I certainly do not mean all. I don't think secular mathematicians are looking to better the world, for example.)

The reason astrology, psychic powers, etc. make a useful comparison, is not that they are similar in every way to religion. What makes them work is an important parallel, Astrology and Christianity are both unfalsifiable; this is important because of an argument many Christians use, it goes something like "You cannot disprove God, so you have to take the concept seriously”.
I do not remember if you subscribe to this particular way of thinking, but it is a common argument.
Pointing out that the Christian has no problem disregarding other unfalsifiable claims, shows he is not taking his own medicine.
Either unfalsifiability is a big deal or it is not. If it is you must take astrology seriously, because you cannot disprove it;
if it is not you will have to agree, that the inability to disprove God is unimportant.

I was stating that science, religion, astrology, numerology are not NOMA and rebutting your claim that numerology and astrology were strawmen by showing that numerology does deal with areas that religion does ( and I'm not referring to all the numerology involved in the christian religion).
Science does make claims about the human condition, resolve the past, predict conditions in the future.... what's your point about that? Mine was that science, religion, astrology, numerology ARE in conflict. If you want to restrict religion to "meaning" claims then hop right in; but that cart in pretty full of astrologers and numerologists doing that too.

None of this is evident from the post you made.

I don't believe that this is actually a stance that many Christians take "commonly."

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.

Having a son with leukemia may direct a scientists effort. His motivation still leaves the science completely non-personal. You are conflating science and scientists. The connection you have found is not between science and religion but between scientists and religion. it may be a driver for scientists.
Likewise with your comment on ethics. The ethics is a property of the scientist not the science. Science may study the ethics of scientists, including why a psychopath lacks even common ethics and a scientist may be motivated by a psychopath in the family to do that study but the scientific output is not related to the relative.

You were the one pointing out an error in my use of astrology and numerology and religion. If you're not sure what topics they deal with you shouldn't have claimed it was a strawman but instead asked about them.

It's like you're arguing for the sake of arguing, without taking into consideration the statements I made.

There is an interface, and the interaction cannot be avoided.

I'm quite sure I understand the relationship you want to try to establish between numerology, astrology, and religion. But in order for you to establish that relationship, you must also establish that relationship with science (because they all accomplish the same goals, according to your characterization).

If you accept that characterization, then you accept that there is inherent conflict. That's fine. You're welcome to that opinion. But then I would say that the problem lies in your characterization and that you are in the position against which Tim Crane is arguing.

The interaction stops at the scientist or the mathematician it doesn't extend to the science or the math.
Because I want to go cycling so I can whistle without disturbing anyone does not establish an interaction between "cycling" and "whistling" it establishes an interaction between Luckyme's desire to cycle and Luckyme's desire to whistle.
You're taking it one step too far.

Statements like this lead me to believe that you don't have much of a knowledge of the history of science and math. Cultural influences (religious and secular) drive much of what science pursues, and how much of that knowledge is interpreted.

Cycling and whistling are activities, not knowledge. The analogy does not work.

What is characteristic about the Wittgensteinian view is a thesis about religious language (that its meaning is non-factual), which Crane explicitly rejects.
This point was also not clear to me. What I think he is saying is that if we ask what the best way to evaluate the plausibility of the resurrection being true is, then we are treating the religious claim of the resurrection as akin to a scientific hypothesis. In other words, while Christianity relies on the resurrection being true, it is not an attempt to understand the world that prioritizes truth alone. That is, treating the belief in the resurrection as a scientific-type belief would mean that we should only accept it if we have good epistemic reasons to believe it is true, whereas if we treat this belief as a religious belief then we can/should accept it if doing so is useful in finding meaning or significance in life.

If this is correct, then he is being a bit coy when he says that he is not a Christian because he rejects the factual basis of some of its central claims. Unless he believes that history or science can prove that these things didn't happen (which I doubt), then his real basis for rejecting these claims is either that he rejects the religion criteria of belief acceptance (accept beliefs that add meaning or significance to your life), or he accepts the religion criteria of belief acceptance and accepting these beliefs do not add meaning or significance to his life.

Obviously the claim that we should have an accurate understanding of religion is normative. However, the essay as a whole seems pretty clearly descriptive. He is making observations about the role that religious beliefs play in believer's lives.
I'm also curious about the forum's theists take on his claims, especially the more apologetic-oriented ones.