Science (Influences of Developments in Religious Belief)

Question 1

Science (general)

Answer 1

• society is proud of science and believes it is reliable
• much money is spent on proving things scientifically
• we get into aeroplanes and trust that they will fly
• we accept and trust advice from doctors
• science uses methods of observation, reason and experiment

Question 2

The Scientific Method

Answer 2

Observation- notice something happens and questions why and how (e.g. Newton and Gravity)

Hypothesis- have an idea that might explain what happened

Experiment- repeated tests to discover whether hypothesis is correct

Law- if hypothesis is proved then it becomes scientific law

Theory- might link several laws together

Science is based on inductive reasoning but conclusions may be wrong

Question 3

Problems with Science

Answer 3

• Some scientists won’t listen to counter arguments

-difficulties occur if the scientist as pre-conceived ideas of what to expect and they don’t look into all of the variables

-perception can be fallible, we may see things we want to see or miss things because we don’t expect them

However: a strength is it is nearly always open to challenges and will reject previous beliefs

Question 4

Religion (relative to science)

Answer 4

-theists are accused of refusing to accept when they are wrong, even in the face of evidence (praying for someone to get better but they don’t)

-not always based on reason and logic

-cannot conduct experiments to test God’s existence

-based on faith and scripture

-Augustine: “faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe”
—proves the sceptic’s point

-believers may claim that God is beyond reason and evidence is only available through faith

Question 5

What is true?

Answer 5

Peter Vardy: in ‘The Puzzle of God’ (1999) considers ways of answering this question, divides opinions into realist and antirealists

Antirealists: all truth is relative, something can be true for one person and not true to another

Realists: believe in actual facts and that a statement corresponds to objective reality, they also allow for the possibility that they could be wrong

It is hard to know what truth is and different philosophers have taken different views

Question 6

Descartes on truth

Answer 6

considered the nature of certainty
“i think therefore i am” (no doubt)
knowledge comes from intuition, not through experience of material things

Locke disagrees:
there is no such thing as an innate idea
all knowledge comes from experience
Primary and Secondary qualities???????????????

Question 7

Russell on truth

Answer 7

common sense tells us that there is a real external world which gives rise to our sense experience

Question 8

George Berkeley

Answer 8

objects only exist by being perceived
the reason that objects can exist without being perceived is because they are being perceived by God

Question 9

The Big Bang

Answer 9

most popular theory by cosmologists on origin of the universe
was observed that galaxies are moving away from us and eachother

scientists theorised that the universe began when matter was tightly packed together in an infinitely hot and dense singularity
used Einstein’s theory of general relativity to conclude that matter was thrown outward by a massive inflation of energy and heat approximately 14 billion years ago

Before the big bang, there was no space or time
Stephen Hawking and Richard Penrose believed both space and time began with the big bang
unclear reason for the big bang as there was nothing before (presumably)

Empirically evidenced: Edwin Hubble’s observation of galaxies’ speeds and cosmic background radiation support the universe having a beginning

Question 10

Steady State Theories

Answer 10

Developed 1940s, proposed that the density of the universe remains constant as it expands because of the continuous creation of a minute number of atoms
Doesn’t fit well with the First Law of Thermodynamics or the big bang theory

became less popular as new observations of galaxies accelerating caused scientists to look at them again
inflationary universe theory (Alan Guth 1980s): the universe expanded at an accelerated rate for between 10-35 seconds right after the big bang

Hugh Everett 1957: every universe that could exist does exist, meaning we live in a multiverse

Question 11

Is there a need for God?

Answer 11

Scientists (like Dawkins and Atkins) claim scientific theories accounting for the universe’s origins remove the need for God
A full scientific explanation for the universe does not exist yet, however
A least we have discovered a physical cause for the universe which is explicable in scientific terms

Cosmological Argument: universe and everything in it is contingent, therefore, there needs to be an external cause for it all, something with necessary existence

Question 12

God of the gaps

Answer 12

used to describe placement of God as the answer to things science can’t yet explain
19th century Christians claimed science would never be able to answer every question, as some things only God can know
this argument has led to a shrinking God, Grand Unified Theory (not yet developed- all physical laws are linked)

—God is no longer necessary as questions will be answered

Question 13

Consensus pre-Darwin

Answer 13

18th century:
-people had confidence in human reason
-enlightenment brought philosophical development
-it seemed the world was static and followed ordered rules and patterns
-saw universe as a well ordered machine
-widespread belief in intelligent designer followed from discovery of natural order

19th century:
-brought rapid developments
-no longer obvious that the world was static
-seemed society and philosophy was changing
-industrial revolution changed lifestyles
-sense of progress

Question 14

(Factors in the process of change) The industrial revolution

Answer 14

-steam power, electricity and other forms of power were being invented
-goods could be mass-produced in factories
-workers became divided and specialised
-people moved away mo places of birth and went to towns and cities where they could be employed in factories
-cities expanded as population grew

Question 15

(Factors in the process of change) Medicine

Answer 15

-developments in medicine and vaccines
-this meant wealthy children were more likely to survive infancy
-population growth
-led to predictions that the country would soon not be able to provide the resources to sustain people (e.g. by Malthus)

Question 16

(Factors in the process of change) Developments in communications

Answer 16

-before the 19th century people would rarely leave their towns and villages
-introduction of railway, telephones, postal system
-allowed people to see other parts of the country or the world
-people could live away from family and remain in contact
-people spoke to and lived with people whose ideas and views were different to the ones they had always accepted

Question 17

(Factors in the process of change) Division between classes

Answer 17

-there had always been a rich/poor divide
-19th century this was exacerbated, especially in cities
-many lived in overcrowded slums
-life of the poor contrasted life of rich who profited from industry
-inequality led to questioning of the role of the church and whether God ad determined each of our places in life

Question 18

Hegel and Marx

Answer 18

Hegel:
-introduced ideas about how progress is made when people catch on to one idea (thesis)
-antithesis=people turning away from an idea and go towards the opposite view
-synthesis=pendulum eventually comes to rest at a middle point

Marx:
-used Hegel’s process
-predicted that the difference between rich and poor would lead to a revolution
-others considered possibility that humanity itself changes

Question 19

Darwin background ideas

Answer 19

-concepts of progress, moving forward and leaving old ways behind were embedded in popular thought
-19th century novels show a nostalgia for a past age and a changing landscape and a concern that progress would be to the detriment of many
-his theory of evolution came from this

Question 20

Theory of Evolution

Answer 20

-animals with the most advantageous adaptations were more likely to survive and pass them on to their offspring
-evolution occurs over time through natural selection

Question 21

How did Darwin’s ideas seem to threaten the edifice of Christianity

Answer 21

-seemed to show humankind was not God’s supreme creation and was the product of chance
-challenges God’s role in creation
-line between humanity and animals blurred, do we have a unique soul or status
-means the Fall is not a historical event and Augustinian theodicy is invalidated
-God as a designer is challenged
-reduces authority of the Bible as it appears to give a false account

Question 22

Edward Pusey (Victorian Church Leader)

Answer 22

“it lies as the bass of our faith that man was created in the perfection of our nature, endowed with supernatural grace, with a full freedom of choice such as man, until restored by Christ, has not bade since”

Question 23

Darwin’s letter to Asa Gray

Answer 23

-“I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding with the living bodies of caterpillars”

-“I cannot anyhow be contended to view this wonderful universe and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force”

Question 24

Samuel Wilberforce

Answer 24

Bishop of Oxford

-Darwins theory showed “a tendency to limit God’s glory in creation”
-“the principle of natural selection is absolutely incompatible with the word of God”
-“contradicts the revealed relations of creation to its creator”

-Arguments centred around gaps in Darwin’s theory as he could not give much evidence
-argued Darwin was presenting a theory without proof
-pointed out that in experience species tend to revert to type (e.g. racehorses): there is a tendency for the offspring to revert to the original rather than continuing to develop the required characteristics suggesting that species are fundamentally fixed

Question 25

Thomas Huxely

Answer 25

advocated Darwinism

-convinced the people that religion was in the realms of superstition
-enlightened people started to eliminate religion
-apparently claimed that he would rather be evolved from an ape than someone who misrepresents those who seek the truth (referring to Wilberforce)

Question 26

Main points made by Creationists

Answer 26

-The belief that nature is ‘all there is’. Everything has to be empirically testable.

-There is a creator God.

-Based on assumptions and faith.

-Scientists who reject the Bible’s literal truth are relying on naturalism, while creationists assume the Bible is the truth.

-Counter large-scale evolutionary changes, suggesting that fossil evidence may align with a sudden creation event like the biblical Flood, and arguing against the belief that the Big Bang and evolution requires more faith than belief in a creator God.

-Argue that if science and the Bible disagree, the Bible is correct because it comes from an infallible God, whereas scientists are fallible.

Question 27

Creationists and the Bible

Answer 27

Creationists believe that people can NEVER disprove the truth of the Bible.

The Bible doesn’t have to match human theory in order to be considered worthwhile.

44% of Americans said that they believe that God created human beings in their present within the last 10,000 years (Creationism in 20th Century America, 1982)

Biblical literalists have tried to overcome the problems of geological evidence.

They identified two separate creations.

“In the beginning” in Genesis, possibly many years ago.
Second took place in six days 4000 years before the birth of Christ
They argue most fossils come from the first creation.

Question 28

The Scopes Trial

Answer 28

Most famous example of conflict between creationism and evolutionary science.
John Thomas Scopes confessed to breaking a law in Tennessee banning the teaching of human evolution in state schools.
His trial focused international attention on the anti-evolution crusade.
Scopes was then FOUND GUILTY as charged, but creationists didn’t celebrate because they received little sympathy from the press.
Creationists could not agree on a theory of creation even amongst themselves.

Question 29

Henry Morris

Answer 29

Henry Morris:
Leading supporter of a literal interpretation of the Bible
One of the founders of the 20th century creationist movement
The Genesis Flood (P&R Publishing, 1960) attempted to use scientific arguments and geological evidence to support the Genesis accounts of creation and the flood
Wanted to show the story of creation of the world in six days

Morris states : “I had become convinced that the Bible was the Word of God, inspired and inerrant in every word.”

Question 30

Morris’ Arguments

Answer 30

No convincing “compromise” theory which allows for a belief in evolution alongside belief in the historical accuracy of the biblical text.
Bible does NOT make mistakes.
We can have complete confidence in the biblical accounts because they were recorded by the only being who has infallible knowledge.
Genesis account must have been written either by God himself on a tablet or by Adam, who has been given the gift of the ability to write.
In Genesis 2 verse 20, Adam only named the animals who were close to him, like livestock and the birds, arguing against critics who said Adam couldn’t have named all the existing animals.
Adam’s intellect would have been far greater than our own.
He does not deny the existence of dinosaurs at some point in history : “even the animals that have since become extinct (…) were made on the fifth and sixth day of the creation week.”
Rejects the claim that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. This would not be consistent with the biblical account.

Question 31

Strengths and Weaknesses of Creationism

Answer 31

PROVIDES ANSWERS
MORAL FRAMEWORK
COMMUNITY AND TRADITION

LACK OF EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
CONFLICT WITH SCIENTIFIC THEORIES
EXCLUSIVITY

Question 32

Intelligent Design

Answer 32

Intelligent design is a religious belief and scientific theory that the universe’s complexity indicates the existence of a designer.
Its supporters would accept the cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God.
One aspect of this approach is the argument from irreducible complexity.

Question 33

Irreducible Complexity

Answer 33

This is an argument against the Darwinian evolutionary theory popularised by Michael Behe in Darwin’s Black Box (1996).

He argued that modern biochemistry had revealed things which had been mysterious in the time of Darwin. X-ray crystallography, which allows scientists to investigate structures smaller than cells, has, in Behe’s view, brought the validity of Darwinism into doubt.

Essentially, some things could not function if one part of them was missing. Therefore, they could not have undergone a step-by-step evolutionary process to reach their state of complexity. They are irreducibly complex.

If an organism developed 5% of a wing, it would not provide said organism with the evolutionary advantage of a full wing, meaning that the ‘wing gene’ would not be any more likely to transfer to the next generation than another gene. Natural selection would not necessarily occur, meaning it cannot explain the development of such complex features.

Question 34

Behe’s examples

Answer 34

A mousetrap: simply would not work if it did not have all of its parts.

An eye: even Darwin accepted this was a problem. Without all of its parts, an eye could not function as it does in humans. How, then, could each part have developed individually, if not contributing to a fully functioning whole?

Question 35

Strengths of intelligent design and irreducible complexity

Answer 35

The complexity of the universe does appear to suggest an intelligent creator; the universe appears to be fine-tuned for the development of intelligent life.
Irreducible complexity uses a flaw in Darwin’s theory of evolution, that is, that complete, functioning wholes exist whilst their parts provide no survival advantage independently.

Question 36

Weaknesses of intelligent design and irreducible complexity

Answer 36

God of the gaps: ‘science is yet to find a reason for something, therefore God did it’. Just because we don’t understand something now, it does not mean that it was God. We are using God to fill gaps in knowledge, which is logically flawed because there may well be another explanation.
Dawkins on intelligent design: it does explain the universe’s complexity but fails in that it begs an explanation for the existence of God who, being capable of designing a complex universe, is presumably complex also: we are “grotesquely lucky to be here” (The Root of all Evil)
Dawkins on irreducible complexity: suggests that one part of an eye is more advantageous than no part of an eye so parts of a whole could gradually develop one by one: “there must be a smooth gradient of advantage all the way from 1 per cent of a wing to 100 per cent”. (The God Delusion)
Irreducible complexity ignores what Darwin himself wrote about evolution by gradual degrees, all of which provide some additional advantage.

Question 37

Cosmological Constant

Answer 37

-A term introduced by Einstein in his equations of general relativity. (λ)
-Represents a constant energy density filling space homogeneously (of uniform structure).
-Introduced to allow for a static universe, counteracting gravity. However when it was discovered that the universe is expanding, Einstein referred to it as his “greatest blunder”.
-In Modern cosmology -> associated with “dark energy”, responsible for acceleration of universe’s expansion.
-Plays crucial role in the current understanding of the universe’s fate and structure.
BASICALLY: key concept in cosmology that represents the energy density responsible for speeding up (accelerating) the universe’s expansion.

Question 38

strengths and weakness of the Cosmological Constant

Answer 38

-It helps explain why the universe is expanding faster and faster, which matches what scientists observe.
-It’s easy to include in Einstein’s equations about how gravity works, so it fits well with what we already know.
-When scientists use the cosmological constant in their models, it fits well with the data they get from studying distant stars and galaxies.

-Scientists predict that the energy in empty space (vacuum energy) should be way bigger than what we observe. The prediction is off by an enormous factor, which is hard to explain. This huge mismatch between theory and observation is a big problem.

-The cosmological constant (which we link to dark energy) started influencing the universe’s expansion only recently in cosmic history. Why now, and not earlier or later? This seems like a strange coincidence that nobody fully understands.

-It JUST works, but why??

Question 39

The Gaia Hypothesis

Answer 39

-Named after Greek Goddess Gaia- Goddess of the earth.
-Scientific/Ecological theory proposed by James Lovelock (1970s)
-Suggests that the Earth and its biological systems behave like a self-regulating, interconnected system, similar to a living organism.
-Living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings to help maintain the conditions for life on earth- regulating the temperature, oxygen levels and other factors necessary for sustaining life.

Question 40

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Gaia hypothesis

Answer 40

-Highlights the interlinks of life forms and their environment. Valuable for understanding how ecosystems function and the importance of biodiversity.

-A holistic, systems-based perspective of Earth, encouraging scientists to look beyond individual species or components and consider how all parts interact dynamically.

-Human activity can disrupt ecosystems!!

-Lacks specific, testable mechanisms to explain how the Earth could actively regulate itself like a living organism. It can seem more metaphorical than strictly scientific.
-Not gained wide acceptance as a formal scientific theory. Many researchers prefer to study Earth’s regulatory systems as separate processes rather than as a single, self-regulating organism.
-The Earth “intends” to self regulate, misleading- bio systems don’t have conscious goals.