----- Original Message ----- From: "Alberto Monteiro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 9:12 AM Subject: Re: Israel and Atheism
> Dan Minette wrote: > > > >> By orthogonal, I understand that the belief in science > >> should be totally uncorrelated to the belief in religion, > >> so that there should be an equal number of people that > >> are (a) very religious and very scientifically-oriented > >> (b) anti-religious and very scientifically-oriented > >> (c) anti-religious and anti-science and > >> (d) very religious and anti-science. > > > > We were actually defining different spaces. I was > > talking about idea space, if you will. You were > > talking about sociology space. > > > How can you define a topology or a metric in a space > of ideas? In a space of people I can just count those > that believe or don�t believe in something, or even > assing a "belief rate" to each person. Its a metaphor. For example, > > > It is true that many people see conflicts between > > religion and science. My argument is that those > > conflicts are not inherent in what religion really > > is and what science really is. > > > I don�t get it. > > Are you treating _ideas_ as something that exist > without people? In a sense. Lets look at mathematical ideas for an example. You know that, for years, the concept of more than 1 parallel line going through a point was considered inherently impossible...or inconsistent with the other 4 postulates of Euclid. Later, it was shown to not be true. Even though people believed incorrectly, that didn't mean that it was a true idea at the time. What I am saying is that acceptance/understanding of scientific methodology is a separate question from acceptance/rejection of the idea of God existing. That science and theology rightly treat different spheres of thought. Part of the reason that people don't believe that is the fact that many (most?) people believe science deals with Truth. It does not. > > For example "The Universe was created by God" > or "The Universe was created because of equation > Y(x, k) = H*Z(k) # Z*H(x)" would be representatives > of points in the axes of Religion and Science? Well, lets take my best understanding. I believe that we, and the reality we live in are created by God. So, on the religion axis, I have a reality created by God. In the science aspect, I think that the best explanation for the existence of the universe is the freezing of the vacuum: spontaneous symmetry breaking. These ideas have no conflict at all. I also believe that phenomenon is the interface between nomenon and human minds: that space-time is not separate from us; but the a priori form of our intuition (a relativistic adaptation of The Critique of Pure Reason by Kant). One of the features of science has been mentioned on sci.physics in discussions with "alternate thinkers" a number of times. That feature is that there are always fundamental postulates that are unsupported. So, for a religious person who things this theory is the best explanation , God created rules which resulted in the vacuum freezing. For a non-religious person, the rules are that way just because. Since this is still fairly speculative science, other believers/non-believers can favor other explanations for the Big Bang, and occupy other pairs of positions in thought space. Dan M. > Alberto Monteiro >
