6.3 religion and scientific debates Flashcards
Describe the scientific method
- observation
- hypothesis
- experimentation
- repeated testing
- inductive- assumptions made
- sometimes deduction- only accurate if premises correct
Describe the religious method
- based on faith and belief
- Fideism- ‘Faithism’, no evidence needed, based on belief using RE to verify
- Critical rationalism- relies on reason, must not go against empirical evidence and must be rational- uses inductive and deductive
- CA and DA uses specific inductive examples
- OA uses deductive reasoning
What are the weaknesses of the religious method?
- results of RB aren’t repeatable
- possible to induce religious feelings- god helmet
What is the evidence from miracles?
- caused by God
- breaks laws of nature- no scientific explanation
- has a purpose
- verifiable
What are the scientific rejections of miracles?
Baruch Spinoza:
- miracles are violation of laws of nature
- natural laws are immutable
- immutable laws can’t be violated
- miracles are impossible
What is the ‘God of the gaps’?
- God used to explain the gaps within science
- one day science will explain gaps- God will be redundent
- scientific advances- God pushed out of gaps, science now answer
Strengths of scientific position on miracles
- uses science to test miracles with reliable evidence
- There’d be no basis for science (spinoza)
- weak evidence when compared to scientific evidence
- miracles have explanations we just don’t know them yet
What are the weaknesses of the scientific position on miracles?
- miracles beyond/ outside laws of science
- ‘scientific laws never change’- spinoza
- big bang theory a singularity and can’t be re-created
- Shows God’s love and power
What is the big bang theory?
- Formed from a one off explosion, called the ‘singularity’- still exploding
- a single point
How does the BBT challenge religious belief?
- contradicts Genesis and creation- 13.7 billion years ago
- If bible wrong about creation, could be wrong about other things
- religions can’t pick and mix
- many christians accept BBT as a cosmology for how God brought the world into being
What were the other theories for creation in the 50s/60s?
- steady state theory- world always existed-Fred Hoyle
- Multiverse, infinite universes- hugh everret
What is creationism?
- Believing genesis as fact
- Adam and eve
- Earth 6000 years old
- Fundamentalists
What are the arguments against creationism?
- Evidence for evolution e.g finches on galagopos
- contradicts science
- Geological evidence
What is intelligent design?
- ‘irreductive complexity’- not gradual evolution, God created us perfectly
- e.g human eye
- anthropic principle
- cosmological constant
- no eveolution
Challenges to intelligent design
- Natural selection causes us to evolve
- Intelligent design has no testable hypothesis
- many Christians believe GOCT caused evolution
What is Darwin’s evolutionary theory?
- natural selection
- no adam and eve
- humans forced to develop not peak of condition as adam and eve presented
What does Richard Dawkins believe?
- Darwinism shows evolution to be ‘blind process’
- RD attacks concept of design directed towards creationists
- RD believes intelligent design is wishful thinking
synoptic link
Gaia hypothesis- secular theory for environmental protection
- religion and science allowed to compromise
