11.13.06
“Beyond Belief”
A really interesting debate/discussion took place where I work. Some of the best scientists gathered and discussed “whether faith in science can ever substitute for belief in God.” A great deal, if not all of them, had Christian roots, so their perception of God and faith came from there. The majority of them did not believe in God, or were not sure of it, but they were very sympathetic to the idea, and did in fact conclude that science can never substitute the belief of God. As a Muslim, our perspective and perception of God is much different than the Christian concept of God, so I wonder what would have resulted if any of them had that concept in their mind. The full article is below.
Atheists Discuss the Benefits of Faith
A gathering of scientists and atheists explores whether faith in
science can ever substitute for belief in God.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Jerry Adler
Newsweek
Updated: 9:51 a.m. AKT Nov 10, 2006Nov. 10, 2006 - The great Danish physicist Niels Bohr, it is said,
had a good-luck horseshoe hanging in his office. “You don’t believe
in that nonsense, do you?” a visitor once asked, to which Bohr
replied, “No, but they say it works whether you believe in it or not.”If one thing emerged from the “Beyond Belief” conference at the Salk
Institute in LaJolla, Calif. it’s that religion doesn’t work the same
way. Some 30 scientists—one of the greatest collections of religious
skeptics ever assembled in one place since Voltaire dined alone—
examined faith from the evolutionary, neurological and philosophical
points of view, and they concluded that some things only work if you
do believe in them. Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary
biologist and author of the best-selling book “The God Delusion,”
said he couldn’t have a spiritual experience even when he tried.
After another panelist, neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran of the
University of California, San Diego, explained that temporal-lobe
seizures of the brain create profound spiritual and out-of-body
experiences, Dawkins disclosed that he had participated in an
experiment that was supposed to mimic such seizures—and even then he
didn’t feel a thing.Dawkins obviously feels this loss is a small price to pay for freedom
from superstition. But even physicist Steven Weinberg, a Nobel
laureate and an outspoken atheist, acknowledged that science is a
poor substitute for the role religion plays in most peoples’ lives.
It’s hard, he said, to live in a world in which one’s highest
emotions can be understood in biochemical and evolutionary terms,
rather than a gift from God. Instead of the big, comforting
certainties promoted by religion, science can offer only “a lot of
little truths” and the austere pleasures of intellectual honesty.
Much as Weinberg would like to see civilization emerge from the
tyranny of religion, when it happens, “I think we will miss it, like
a crazy old aunt who tells lies and causes us all kinds of trouble,
but was beautiful once and was with us a long time.”To which Dawkins retorted, “I won’t miss her at all.” Only in the
most extreme circumstances would he deign to take account of the
consolations offered by religion. He would not, for instance, try to
talk a Christian on his deathbed out of a belief in Heaven. He didn’t
say what he would do if he were the one near death, but it’s unlikely
he would be calling for a priest. The atheist philosopher Daniel
Dennett had been expected to attend, but two weeks earlier had been
rushed to the hospital with a near-fatal aortic rupture. At the
conference, people handed around copies of Dennett’s essay entitled
“Thank Goodness,” posted on the science Web site Edge.org, in which
he described how annoying it was to hear from friends that they had
been praying for his recovery. “I have resisted the temptation,” he
wrote, “to respond, ‘Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also
sacrifice a goat?’”It’s hard to be a skeptic, that much was clear from the conference.
Hard for the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the
Hayden Planetarium in New York, who described trying to offer up
thanks “to the scientists who made this abundance of food possible”
at a friend’s Thanksgiving dinner, only to be shouted down by demands
for a proper grace. Hard for atheist author Sam Harris (”Letter to a
Christian Nation”) who likes to point out that people today believe
in God based on no more evidence than the ancients had for believing
in Zeus or Poseidon—with the result that in addition to all the mail
he gets from Christians, he’s now getting angry letters from pagans
who claim he’s insulted their beliefs, as well.The moderate position at the conference was represented by physicist
Lawrence Krauss, who took the view that “science doesn’t make it
impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible to not
believe in God.” The majority view was best articulated by Tyson, who
said that atheism is not just the only intellectually coherent
position, but a positive boon to humanity. He makes much of the
statistic that only 15 percent of the scientific elite in the United
States, defined as members of the National Academy of Sciences,
express belief in a personal God who takes an active role in the
world. That’s approximately the mirror image of the population as a
whole—but to Tyson, the mystery is that the number of believers among
the scientist group isn’t zero.Tyson is a commanding public speaker, which is why his fellow
astronomer Carolyn Porco, the head of the imaging team for the
Cassini space probe to Saturn, nominated him at the conference to be
the first minister of her proposed (although not very seriously)
“Church of Science.” She thinks science is a perfectly adequate
substitute for religion. “Being a scientist and staring immensity and
eternity in the face every day is as grand and inspiring as it gets,”
she says. “No religion offers anything comparable.” To the promise of
immortality, she counters with the proposition that all the atoms of
our bodies will be blown into space in the disintegration of the
solar system, to live on forever as mass or energy. That’s what we
should be teaching our children, not fairy tales about angels and
seeing grandma in Heaven. “If anyone has something to replace God,”
she says, “I think scientists do.” Of course, it’s not clear that
anyone else is looking for one.source: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15653706/site/newsweek/