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Re: Evolution and Creationism

On Sun, 22 Aug 1999, Rick Tarara wrote:


But who really is to blame for this? It seems to me that scientists with
religious convictions would almost be 'obligated' to do this research. What
better way to serve those beliefs than to provide scientific evidence to
support them? Could it be that such attempts HAVE been made--and
failed--and therefore not reported.

This is possible. Disproof of religion might have already occured and
been covered up by the pro-religious researchers, but we have no way to
know this, and the speculation therefor can have no bearing on this
problem.

What about NON-religious researchers? Suppose an openminded, unbiased
scientist decides to attempt to prove/disprove religion because the
problem is an intellectual challenge. Where will they obtain funding?
Not from conventional sources, conventional sources would just laugh. Not
from religious sources either, since that would be like taking money from
cigarette companies to do a study of lung cancer epidemiology. If a
scientist *did* take money from a religious group, I think the conflict of
interest would automatically turn their research turn into non-science,
same as with cigarette-company sponsored cancer research. The funding
must come from an unbiased source, and in my experience, such sources are
extremely rare, and therefor such research is extremely rare.


Of course it would not be in the
religious-serving purposes of such scientists (especially Christians) to
investigate UFOs, poltergeists, or most paranormal phenomena too closely,
since confirmation of any of these might conflict with their religious
beliefs.

In other words their religion would bias their choice of research.
(Following the same reasoning, if a scientist strongly disbelieves
religion, that scientist would not use their precious time to do any
research into whether religions are true or not.)


In other words, the 'refusal' to study religious phenomenon scientifically
IS scientifically illogical (at least for religious scientists) unless it is
clear (from previous experimentation or more deeply held scientific beliefs)
that such work would be fruitless. However, the very same 'religious
scientists' who should be anxious to pursue the study of religious phenomena
might be very hesitant to study other 'strange' phenomena which might
seriously conflict with their belief systems.

Agreed.

If we were to use physics research techniques get to the bottom of
religion, we need (A) funding from unbiased sources, and (B) scientists
who do not have a large emotional investment in seeing religion be proved
*or* disproved. Essentially the funding is unavailable. Also, if most
skeptical scientists would hate to see religions shown valid, and if most
religious scientists would hate to see religions be proved fantasy, then
we are stuck. The problem is one of politics, human nature, and I think
also a great desire among all parties NOT to know the truth.


Ultimately what I'm
suggesting here is that if there really is insufficient scientific testing
of religious claims, then there is nobody to blame but religious scientists.
To their (minor) credit, the so-called 'scientific creationists' at least
attempt to do this--badly if we can judge from just the examples that have
appeared on this list--but attempts nonetheless.

I disagree. Yes, they attempt research, but there is a big problem. An
analogy would be that, if we lived in a world where cancer
research was rarely done, we should blame the cigarette companies and
their researchers for this, because they are the ones who are most
involved in such things. But in *our* world when these biased researchers
use politically-attached funding to do research, the results are so
suspicious that we reject them. In a similar way, if openly christian
scientists used money from the church to prove or disprove religion, then
in practice this is not Science. The huge conflict of interest spoils
everything. Only if christian physicists DISPROVED some of the claims of
christianity would we sit up and take notice.

To investigate religion, we need funding from conventional sources, and we
need scientists who are not biased. Both of these must come from
mainstream science. If religion has not been investigated scientifically,
then mainstream science is to blame.


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