What's Wrong with America Part 2.5: Creationists

[hohotread]

I don’t have a problem with creationism in principle. Religious freedom is a necessary component of any free society, so people can believe whatever they want so long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others. Two things make creationists a problem in America, however.
The first problem is that creationists have radical contingent which

Comments

[qfish]

Let us look at your sentence, without your parenthetical quotation of me: "To claim scientific method is the only way to discover something implies that before Feynman, no one knew anything." I've already dealt with the question of whether I ever claimed that "scientific method is the only way to discover something". But you go on to claim that this somehow implies that knowledge is impossible, as if scientific discovery is the only sort of thing called knowledge. I don't recall making any sort of claims about knowledge here, and certainly didn't conflate a mere means of acquiring knowledge with knowledge itself or as the sole means of acquiring knowledge. OK, so maybe my "method of any sort" covers all means of acquiring knowledge, but again, I never claimed that was scientific method alone. As for the Feynman reference, I don't know how you got that, as even were I speaking of scientific method, and even were I making the implication you ascribe to me, surely there is a more historically accurate representative, say Galileo or Francis Bacon.

Now to the more substantive. You said:
"If religion motivated, influenced, and/or funded those people who made the discoveries, and the subsequent acceptance as fact, then religion is as responsible for the discovery as science ever could be."
and
"whatever motivated them to make these discoveries and, more importantly, pass them on, is what is responsible for the discovery"
and
"When a religious temple ruled a society and controlled and supported all the learned people and their resources, it was as much responsible for their discoveries as a research institute is today".

To these I must reiterate that what psychologically motivates an individual who makes a discovery is not the same as being responsible for the discovery. If we take your statements to their logical extreme, than anything that has any motivating impact upon anyone who makes any sort of discovery can be credited with the discovery. But because every human action is motivated by previous human actions stretching back into the mists of time, then the discovery of anything can be credited to nearly anything that happened before it. Einstein's mother deserves just as much credit for the theory of relativity as Einstein himself. Or perhaps the Swiss government should be credited with the discovery since it employed Einstein. Of course, the state of the Swiss government is a result of a long process stretching through the middle ages and the fall of Rome, whose ultimate expansionistic policies can be traced back to the state of Italy, the Etruscans, the Greeks, and so forth. So is Pericles to be credited with discovering all knowledge? Homer? Perhaps all discovery is really contained within the spark first produced by the banging together of two stones. But I would reject such an idea except in the most metaphorical of senses. No, the credit of discovery is much more contained than that, and is dependent on those factors that are in some sense relevant to the discovery being made. A religious institution is different from a research institute precisely because it is not the goal of the religious institution to make discoveries and there is nothing outside a vague motivating factor within religion that leads to discoveries. There is certainly, within religion, nothing that is relevant in the appropriate sense. If I'm wrong, bring an example, a purely religious act that caused a discovery. Maybe the Pythagoreans would count, perhaps some other examples from early mathematics, but other than that I can't think of anything. People may set sail or look at the stars under religious influence, but the resulting observations are not themselves inherently religious.

To sum up. I never claimed that science and the scientific method are the only way to progress. I never claimed that all progress consists of discovery. I thus never claimed that religion has never helped humanity to progress. Nor did I ever claim that scientific method is the only sort of method for discovery. I did claim that what sorts of discoveries have been made cannot be attributed to religion, as religion has no role in the discovery other than the psychological motivation of the discoverer, which is, in my estimation, insufficient.

[hohotread]

I have to grant that I took your implications to a rather extreme degree, because it was provocative. However, I do feel the need to point out that you (like me) are a modern, science-minded person. If the hypothetical augur proclaimed the existence of America, and did so so convincingly that all of Europe accepted its existence, would that be an acceptable method of discovery? Even if not one person had been to America, but everyone in Europe agreed it was definitely there, would the augur be accepted as the discoverer of America, or would the first person to actually go there and set foot on the continent be the discoverer?

I know my answer to that, and I suspect I know yours, but it's important to realize that exactly what constitutes an acceptable method is based on a person's opinion or a group's consensus. To millions of people through history, "because the Church says so" was acceptable method. I'm willing to give credit to religion when it prompted people to use more (note the comparative form) scientific methods than "because I said so" to make discoveries, especially if those people would probably not have had the motivation, opportunity, or resources to make the discovery without their particular religious aid. When a monk uses scientific method to discover something, I'm perfectly willing to say that religion and science both had a hand in it. The two are not mutually exclusive, except in the minds of religious fundamentalists and rabid atheists, and I'm saying that the rational, mainstream people should oppose--actively--anyone who says they are.