Hi On Thu, 4 Oct 2001, James Guinee wrote: > Just as science cannot teach much about morality, religion cannot teach > much about science. It doesn't mean they can't have some partnership, but > not much of one.
The complication for those of us who teach and do science about human beings is, do we really want to say that "science cannot teach much about morality?" Or that science cannot teach much about such essences of human experience as consciousness? Or about out-of-body experiences? And so on. Now that science addresses such questions more fully, I think that it will be increasingly difficult to demarcate science and religion, not that it is particularly easy even now. The book Jim cited sounds very interesting and does, I think, clearly demonstrate some of the potential negative consequences for religion of trying to put itself into the scientific domain (i.e., having theories about the world that can be determined empirically to be valid or not, making testable predictions, basing belief on the outcome of studies, ...). Similarly, efforts to perhaps promote religion because of its utilitarian value (e.g., promoting happiness, longevity, ...) likewise run risks of setting the grounds for dimishing of religion if some more utilitarian model should emerge. As with many domains, people are probably not very good at anticipating the long-term consequences of their actions. Best wishes Jim ============================================================================ James M. Clark (204) 786-9757 Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax University of Winnipeg 4L05D Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED] CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark ============================================================================ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
