Dear Patrick, My thanks for your interesting response.
At the start of the 20th Century it was, perhaps, still acceptable for Peirce and Whitehead to contend that "that holding religious beliefs and maintaining a responsible and coherent scientific attitude were fully compatible with one another." Although, Whitehead was more committed to this view and I suspect that Peirce would have been easily persuaded from it.
At the start of the 21st Century I see no good cause for accepting it, if by it we mean adhering to the religious conventions of the past in any form.
Hypotheses are one of two classes of merit. The first are the useful hypotheses. They are constructive and they make falsifiable predictions - they are those that Popper and Peirce would seek. The second class, all other hypotheses, are those that are not constructive and do not make falsifiable predictions.
Science pursues the former and rapidly dismisses the latter. It is certainly foolish today to base research programs and public science expenditure on premises that clearly fall into the latter class - as is happening today in the USA and EU.
The provisional nature of scientific hypothesis does not excuse or condone the acceptance of hypotheses clearly of the second kind - and the "market of ideas" is not served by including them.
A belief in God by any inherited convention falls manifestly into the second class. Even if the proposed God turned up and said "I did it" this would still not be science since a priori predictions based on the premise are not falsifiable. Science simply cannot take God's word for it. If there is such a God then science is simply a pragmatic understanding God's will. This view would still not excuse the intellectual laziness that is the invention of emergence and identity theories - or change the irrational nature of an intuition that a God exists in the first place. It does not block inquiry to insist on sound premises and good reason.
This is not to say that there is not something unknown and equally remarkable about the universe. But if there is, and I certainly believe that there is in the unexplained presence of experience in the world, then it is for science to discover.
My reference to Christophe Koch is meant with the greatest respect - I admire what he has written and that he has written openly about his beliefs. And my observation remains a valid one. Scientists that adhere to any conventional notion of God, of there being something "extra" to the universe beyond science, are necessarily predisposed to accept the magic of today's emergence and identity theories. Mid 20th century logicians threw the baby out with the bath water by ignoring experience and not taking it seriously as a phenomenon (as Peirce did). Their dismissal of it has left a hole that has been filled by the very same irrational propositions they sought to counter.
With respect, Steven Patrick Coppock wrote:
Hi Steven,
--- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [email protected]
