Recently in Science Category
Aviation and data geeks should enjoy this.
I'm a scientist; I believe in God.
I encourage you to read the brief commentary by Dr. Francis Collins linked above. He's the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, and former atheist. I nearly included his book on my list for 2007, but went with John Polkinghorne's book instead.
As a scientist, academician, and Christian, I'm always interested to read about other believing scientists and philosophers. Especially those that speak openly about their faith. It's far more common to see this boldness with senior scientists (hence the title of this entry) because faith is shunned so much in the sciences, and especially in my field of Psychology.
Let me just say how refreshing to read his statement about Evolution:
Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.
It's time for evangelicals to embrace evolution and common decent much like the Catholic Church (eventually) adopted Copernicus's heliocentric model of the solar system. As Collins says, "I find no conflict here." However, it is not my intent to delve deeply into the Evolution-Creation debate with this post. That'll have to wait for another day.
I'm reading a Philosophy of Science book by Abraham Kaplan called The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science with some colleagues at school. Kaplan borrowed from John Dewey when he stated the autonomy of inquiry principle as a declaration of scientific independence in his opening paragraph.
It is the principle that the pursuit of truth is accountable to nothing and to no one not a part of that pursuit itself.
This is an idealistic position because scientists are held accountable by many sources whether regardless of legitimacy. My question is whether the same principle applies to religious truth-seekers? Are we only accountable to others on "the quest"? Even if the answer is yes, it's rarely a satisfying response to critics.
What would it take for you to be convinced that Floyd Landis is not guilty of using performance enhancing drugs (or other cheating techniques)? Would you have been convinced if the sample B test had come out normal? What about now that his sample B confirmed the results from sample A? This current controversy brings up an important consideration when talking about matters of science and faith (or anything, really). What is your standard of evidence for believing or disbelieving something, or even abandoning belief?
Naturally, we have different standards for different beliefs. Sometimes it doesn't take much, and other times a mound of evidence may be required. For example, it would require a tremendous volume of evidence for my friend Jeff to believe that Barry Bonds didn't cheat. Meanwhile, it doesn't take much to believe that someone is a cheater. How many times do you need to observe someone cheat to know he or she is a cheater? Once.
The above examples are behavioral, but consider deeper belief systems that people hold. I have to ask myself, what would it take for me to abandon my Christian faith? Is there anything that could do it? Such a standard of evidence tends to be exceptionally high for people of dedicated religious conviction, be it Christian or otherwise. Likewise, the standard can be equally high, if not higher, for non-believers to be convinced.
For example, naturalists typically have an exceptionally high standard of evidence for accepting non-natural explanations of phenomena. I suspect that even directly witnessing a miraculous or supernatural event would leave the dedicated naturalist in search of a natural explanation, unwilling to accept a supernatural one. As scientists like to say, exceptional claims require exceptional evidence. (By the way, this heuristic generally applies in science across the board, and rightfully so.)
In terms of the intersection between science and faith, standards of evidence become critical when discussing the evolution/creation/ID debate, miracles, the resurrection, etc. I wrote about this issue to set the stage for later posts. In the meantime, think about what beliefs you hold that you would be hard pressed to abandon, and those that you would easily abandon. Is there anything that would require enormous evidence for you to believe? (see Barry Bonds example above.)
