Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 October 31

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October 31

Religious stance on origin of life

So far, science knows much, but not all, about the chemical proceses that led to the origin of life: likely elements, likely conditions, etc. As far as I know, religion would still atribute the begining of it to a divine intervention, but don't interfere in the discussions about molecules, enviorment, element reactions, etc.

But what would you think would happen if at some point in the future the study of the origin of life gets so advanced, that scientists become capable of designing a controled experiment that recreates such conditions and success in creating life from inanimated elements? Wich would be the religious reaction to that? MBelgrano (talk) 02:31, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Any response they would have would be countered by Occam's razor. However, just because they would have figured out how it happened, it wouldn't necessary prove that the divine didn't cause it, push it along, or set it up or whatever. It certainly doesn't prove that there was an interference, but that is what faith is for. —Akrabbim^talk 02:50, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

In fact, I think it's likely many would suggest that the experiment, which had been carefully set up by scientists, even proves that the divine hand guided the origins of life, since it takes a conscious mind to design the necessary conditions. (Note: I'm not making this claim or interested in arguing its validity. But I think it's a likely claim, under the circumstances MBelgrano describes.) Jwrosenzweig (talk) 02:55, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Science seeks to explain HOW things work whereas religions seek to explain WHY they do what they do. Religions will always be involved in questions of creation for this reason. Pollinosisss (talk) 03:45, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

"It is a tedious cliche (and, unlike many cliches, it isn't even true) that science concerns itself with how questions, but only theology is equipped to answer why questions. What on Earth is a why question? Not every English sentence beginning with the word 'why' is a legitimate question. Why are unicorns hollow? Some questions simply do not deserve an answer." -- Richard Dawkins 81.131.64.122 (talk) 06:06, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Wow, that's a great example of a straw man.–RHolton≡– 14:08, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

There is a joke about this; God challenges some scientists to create life from scratch, so they think, no problem, and they go grab some dirt; God says they have to make their own dirt first. Or something like that. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:52, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Carl Sagan's recipe for making apple pie from scratch starts out: "First, create the Universe". -- JackofOz (talk) 20:52, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a huge fan of Richard Dawkins, but I agree that the "how vs why" thing makes little sense. Science has explained the seasons and the tides and the motions of the planets; it's explained why the sky is blue and why it rains and why there's a funny smell after a lightning strike; it's explained why blood is red and why our armpits smell and why we get sick. Science has an excellent track record with "why" questions. -- BenRG (talk) 20:13, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Those are all "how" questions. The "why" questions are the metaphysical questions. Here we have in mind the non-material causes of material things.Pollinosisss (talk) 21:00, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I think (or I'd always assumed) that how-vs-why was supposed to be about gathering facts vs providing explanations. I suppose you could take it to be about physics vs metaphysics instead, but I don't think that leaves you any better off, because science keeps answering the metaphysical questions. A lot of the questions I asked above were once considered metaphysical. There are some eternal metaphysical questions, but the referent of those questions keeps changing. At one time when people talked about the origin of the universe they were talking about 4004 BC, but then science explained the formation of the earth and the question became where that matter had come from; that was explained by stellar nucleosynthesis and the big bang, and the question became what had caused the initial conditions of the big bang; that was explained by inflation and reheating, and the question became the origin of the inflation; and you can still put God in that gap, but he may not be safe there for long. -- BenRG (talk) 23:10, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

You will always require a first cause though won't you? Wouldn't this cause have to be ontologically prior to matter, putting it beyond the power of science? Doesn't this mean that religion will always have a role to play? Pollinosisss (talk) 00:20, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

They're only "how" questions because you want them to be. "Why is the sky blue?" is a perfectly good "why" question that science has answered. The truth of the matter is that religion doesn't answer any questions at all, beyond "Because god said so, that's why." Matt Deres (talk) 23:50, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Science has told us how the sky is blue, not why it is so.

An interesting possible answer to the "why is the sky blue" question could be "the sky is blue because it is best for it to be blue". I myself find that to be a much more satisfying answer than "because god said so".Pollinosisss (talk) 00:20, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

What do you find satisfying about a non-answer? "The sky is blue because that's best" is meaningless; first cousin to "because god wills it", but without even a pretext of explanation. Matt Deres (talk) 04:32, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

If "how vs why" equates to "physical vs metaphysical" then Dawkins' quote above applies quite nicely. The metaphysical version of Why is the sky blue? has about as much utility as Why are unicorns hollow?. Some "why" questions are just not worth contemplating. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:04, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not true, Matt, that "religion doesn't answer any questions at all". Religion is mainly based on faith or belief, and has never pretended to do otherwise. It answers questions in its own terms; you can take those answers or leave them, just as one might disbelieve a whole host of predictions based on scientific knowledge, such as the one that confidently proclaimed that humans could not possibly survive vehicular travel above 15 miles an hour. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:14, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

You say it's not true and then support the opposite with every word thereafter. Religion answers no questions beyond "God wills it" and that's been true ever since our hairy ancestors first thought about why the sun makes crops grow or why rainclouds make thunder or even why murder is such a bad thing. No evidence, no open-minded consideration of other options, just an attempt to get themselves to "god wills it" in a way that satisfied the writer. I've never heard the 15 mph thing, though people always say stupid stuff and I don't doubt that someone said that. After evidence piled up, what happened next? The scientifically minded folks observed what went on and amended their ideas. The religious folks contributed as much to the event as they always have: if it works, it's god's will; if it doesn't, then it was never to be. Matt Deres (talk) 04:43, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

'Religion answers no questions beyond "God wills it" ', is something that can only really be said by someone who has never tried to understand a real religion. In my Catholic childhood, I was never given 'God wills it' as an answer to any question, although the question of God's will did come up in the context of the Passion and Holy Orders (please follow the links and read the ledes, rather than assume...). This is largely because the sort of questions we were looking at with religion were nothing like the questions we answered scientifically: they were questions of ethics and how you should behave, and how the world should be. Questions we explored with religion from an early age were things like "what should I do when someone is mean to me?", "What should I do when someone looks sad?", "How should we behave when someone makes us cross?", "How should we act towards people who are less well off than ourselves?". When we got older, the questions got more difficult and had less clear-cut answers, but none of them had the answer "God wills it" or "God did it". 86.142.224.71 (talk) 16:38, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Those are questions of ethics. You may answer them in a religious framework, but religion does not inherently answer those questions. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:52, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure it is possible to generalize a "religion reaction" to scientific accounts of things that are previously considered the provenance of religion. In previous instances of this happening (accounts of speciation; accounts of the origins of the universe; accounts of the stability of the heavens, etc.), there are a whole range of reactions. Some scientific results are resisted; some are accepted with modifications; some are accepted 100%; some lead people to reject certain religious accounts; etc. It varies quite a bit between religious traditions, as well as individuals. You can easily imagine some religious people rejecting the ground rules of the experiment, or of insisting that there is always a little room for God in the unknowns (God of the gaps). You can imagine some seeing the scientific account as simply a naturalistic account of God's work. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:07, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that science can explain everything simply because I'm not sure that human mind can understand everything and is unlimited in relation to its ability to understand the physical world. For example, I'm not convinced that humans will be able to extract a formula which tell which number is prime number (but it may well happen-or that they have different mate that we can't understand). Or, for instance the Gödel's incompleteness theorems that according to some postmodernist philosophers indicate in the most scientific way that science can't know everything (even it's realy not as simple as they think). I think that the greates question that science is facing is not "how life were form" but what is cognizance -because if it's a product of neuronal activity, it must have physical characteristics (e.g., mass, volume) and this is something hard to imagine to be solved (we don't even have yet a good operational definition of what it's-but when thinking on it, if we do have, then we already solved this question).--Gilisa (talk) 10:10, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Science can answer all your questions and more, but if you don't accept its implications, then you can still find a place for religion and gods. Science has answered questions about life and death, about how we got here and why no one knows where we'll be going, but that hasn't stopped religion, has it? Imagine Reason (talk) 15:56, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Imagine Reason, I realy think that arguing that science can answer everything or that it already answered the big questions is a kind of dogmatism. I guess that because of the potential religious implications of what I wrote you respond this way, howeberm this wasn't the point I tried to make.--Gilisa (talk) 10:08, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

This is a very good article. It is religious in the sense that I can't understand it. Bus stop (talk) 16:08, 1 November 2009 (UTC)