[The notes for this topic will be brief. Class discussion will, I hope, bring out the central points in Gould’s essay and raise some questions about what his view is.]

 

I. The NOMA thesis

 

1) The general idea is that there is no conflict between science and religion. Gould’s essay develops a common theme. See letter to editor of local newspaper, 2/20/06 for one expression of a similar view.

 

2) See Gould’s clear statement of his thesis just under title of essay.

 

3) Creationism (and intelligent design) constitute only one potential point of conflict. We will not focus just on that.

 

4) Gould says that the domain of expertise of science is “the empirical constitution of the universe” (p. 2, page numbers in my printout) and religion is “proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives.”(p. 2) Wisdom requires attention to both. Restated on p. 3 (my printout) in paragraph beginning “The text of Humani Generis ...” Notice that he says that there are other “magisteria” as well.

 

5) Next ¶: the two domains “bump right up against each other” He gives two examples: both domains are relevant to questions about a) responsibilities to other species, b) consequences of evolution for “the meaning of human life.”

 

6) There are a few passages about “souls” in the essay. First, when he first starts discussing Pope Pius XII (p. 3) - the Church teaches that Catholics must believe that “God infused the soul into” the human body. Next, on p. 4 (for me) Pius says that evolution can be accepted as long you also “accept the divine Creation and infusion of the soul (a theological notion under the magisterium of religion). This idea is repeated a few times. But then notice what he says about 6 paragraphs before the Postscript: “I may, for example, privately suspect ...”

 

7) Two paragraphs before this he says that he is “not a believer”. Why not?

 

8) But he opposes those, described in the paragraph before that, who he describes as scientific “hard-liners”. What is his gripe with them?

 

II. Formulating Gould’s Arguments

 

Gould says that there can be no conflict between religion and science when each sticks to its proper domain. Others seem to think that something like that is right.

 

Arg. 1
1. Proper religious statements are exclusively about morality or the meaning of life.
2. Proper scientific statements are exclusively about the empirical constitution of the universe.
3. No statement about morality or the meaning of life can conflict with any statement about the empirical constitution of the universe.
4. So, no proper religious statement can conflict with any proper scientific statement. (1), (2), (3)

 

(1) unduly restricts religion. It’s hard to imagine religion without assertions about the past, about the existence of God, etc. And, as Gould says, it makes claims about minds.

 

We can fix up the argument:

 

Arg. 2
1. Proper religious statements are exclusively about morality, the meaning of life, or untestable, unobservable empirical matters.
2. Proper scientific statements are exclusively about testable and observable empirical matters.
3. No statement about morality, the meaning of life, or untestable, unobservable empirical matters can conflict with any statement about testable and observable empirical matters.
4. So, no proper religious statement can conflict with any proper scientific statement. (1), (2), (3)

Note: you should understand (2) to allow theoretical statements.

 

Obj.: (1) still restricts what religions can properly say. Christianity can properly say that Jesus existed.

We can revise again.

 

Arg. 3
1. Proper religious statements are exclusively about morality, the meaning of life, or untestable, unobservable empirical matters, or statements that agree with generally accepted scientific claims about testable and empirical matters.
2. Proper scientific statements are exclusively about testable and observable empirical matters.
3. No statement about morality, the meaning of life, or untestable, unobservable empirical matters or that agrees with generally accepted scientific claims about testable and observable empirical matters can conflict with any generally accepted scientific statement about testable and observable empirical matters.
4. So, no proper religious statement can conflict with any proper and generally accepted scientific statement. (1), (2), (3)

 

This is the idea that religion should defer to science. This is my favorite version of the no conflicts thesis. Some comments.

 

III. Discussion - Based on Dawkins’ Response

 

A. Religion on Science’s Turf

 

Most of what follows concerns the premise saying that proper religious statements are confined to morality.

 

1) Dawkins claims that religions make many scientific claims. But: the argument as formulated was about “proper” statements. Gould could say that all this stuff is improper (or, for last version of argument, fits with accepted science.)

 

2) Different religions say different things. It would be a mistake to ignore the differences. But also a mistake to ignore what actually is said by leaders of various prominent religions. Dawkins considers Catholicism, as did Gould.

 

3) Gould seemed to think that statements about the existence of souls fell into the untestable category that was within the domain of religion. Dawkins addresses this. a) First quote from “Message on Evolution” - asserts that there is an “ontological difference” (discontinuity) between people and all other things. b) But then question arises: is this compatible with evolution, which suggests continuity? c) Second quote - we can observe a lot, but not “moment of transition.” d) Dawkins says this is “obscurantism.” That seems unfair. e) He then claims that “Catholic morals have scientific implications.” We will return to this later. f) Next, he says that “Religion makes existence claims, and this means scientific claims.” This is the central issue. Developed in (4).

 

4) See Gould on souls (top of p. 6, ¶ beginning “Religion is too important...”). Here is the clearest point of disagreement. Gould says questions about souls are beyond science and then science can neither prove nor disprove them; Dawkins says that asserting their existence is a scientific claim. Given what we’ve discussed, it may be easy to see what’s going on. Consider the hypothesis:

 

  S. People have (immaterial) souls.

 

It cannot be falsified (proven false). You can constantly fail to observe them, but it is not “falsifiable” if this means that there is some potential observation, O, such that, O implies ~(S). It is also not provable, in the sense that there is no O such that O implies S. (This assumes that O in question is a “direct” observation, and that souls are not in this way “directly observable”.) If this makes (S) beyond science, then so is

 

  E. There are electrons (or quarks, or ....)

 

(E) is about theoretical entities. This was the trouble with the falsifiability idea, interpreted in the simple way just used.

            But IBE gave us a better account of how to deal with things like (E). But if “falsifiable” means something like “not part of the best explanation” then (E) is falsifiable. But so is (S).

 

            Note that Gould says that he cannot accept the Church’s position on this. My guess is that he agrees with the best explanation point just made. Otherwise, it’s hard to understand why he would have any belief on the topic at all.

 

Conclusion: claims like (S) are claims about the world to be accepted or rejected on the basis of the merits of the explanations in which it figures.

 

5) Two points to note: a) the previous point does not address the theoretical merits of (S). Some people think that to account for consciousness, freedom and agency, or some other (allegedly) observable fact about people, we must accept (S). This is an IBE argument for (S). The evolutionary continuity argument - and maybe developmental continuity arguments - together with puzzles about interaction perhaps point in the other direction.

b) People often say that science is about the material constitution of the universe, and thus not about souls. This may be a complex topic, but it’s very hard to see what the word “material” is doing in that claim, or why it is added. If an IBE argument led to (S), we should accept (S). If not, not.

 

6) A general theme here. Call it the “No Free Pass” Thesis: you don’t get to say that something is part of your religion, and thus reasonable, just because it is part of a religion.

 

7) None of this addresses the value or importance of religion in life.

 

8) Dawkins takes religious sentences to be literal assertions. Some reject that. See paragraphs 5-6 in Gould. He mentions, and rejects, biblical literalism. You can take this doctrine to an extreme: all the seeming factual assertions should not be taken literally. One version of this: they are not assertions at all, but rather just statements of commitment to a way of life. (Non-cognitivism.) A This may be a way to eliminate conflicts. Does it leave religious utterances with enough content? And it is hard to reconcile with Gould’s claim that he’s an agnostic. Another idea is suggested by Gould about 5 paragraphs from end - statements about souls have “metaphorical value”. Maybe they are just metaphors (but for what? can they still be true or false?) Why, then, would he not accept “their view” of souls?

 

Conclusion: many paradigmatic religious sentences, including some Gould mentions (e.g., people have souls), make claims about what exists in the world. They are like theoretical claims in the sciences. The idea that they cannot be falsified or verified only seems right if you assume the naive view about scientific claims that we discussed and rejected earlier. If instead you assume that scientific assertions are to be rationally assessed by the criteria of theory choice - simplicity, etc. - that we discussed, then the religious assertions seem to be amenable to the same kind of rational evaluation. Are there observable facts best explained by appeal to these claims. The characteristic religious claims are, in fact, often defended in just this way. Give examples - cosmological argument for god, various arguments for souls. No stance taken here on the merits of these arguments. One way to avoid this result: non-cognitivism.

 

B. Dawkins on “Who Owns Morals?”

 

Most of this is about the same premise, but about the aspect of it that morality is the “magisterium” of religion, that is, its domain of expertise.

 

1) There are very hard questions about the basis of moral belief. We can’t study that in detail here. But here are some comments about this.

 

2) [Not from Dawkins.] One view about morality holds that there are no moral truths. People just have different attitudes. We like this, they like that. End of story. But if you have that view, then it’s very hard to see how morality can be anyone’s “domain of expertise.” There is nothing to be expert about. This makes trouble for Gould’s view. He must think that there is a domain of moral truths for religion to be expert about.

 

3) But then the question of why religion gets to be expert about that arises. Once we get past the naive views described in (2), one can wonder why Gould thinks that religions have some special role in thinking about values. To the extent that they have their source in old texts, they seem just to be one way of dealing with these matters. It could be that religious leaders have thought long and hard about moral issues, and they may have tremendous insight. But the merits of the moral views are independent of the distinctly religious factual claims they might make.

 

4) Dawkins says, the basis of moral belief is hard to find. No one (or few) take the Bible to be “bedrock”, even though they do sometimes appeal to it. Anyone who goes beyond the old moral teachings must think that there is some other source. But that source is often secular. So the idea that religion has a domain of expertise is questionable. Be careful here: at most Dawkins has argued for this claim: (almost) no one actually accepts “no civilized person ...” Nothing much strictly follows from this.

 

5) Dawkins asserts: people pick and choose which elements from their religious sources to accept, so they must have a non-religious source of ultimate moral conviction, and he suggests that this is “liberal consensus”. (Formulate this as an argument.)

            There is room to criticize the inference from the premise to the conclusion: the religious texts taken as a whole yield a general view, which must be modified in light of further thought. There is no other source - rather you are working out apparent inconsistencies from within this source.

 

C. Can there be conflicts?

 

This has to do mainly with the third premise - no conflicts between claims about the nature of the universe and moral claims.

 

1) Is it Gould’s view that science has nothing to contribute to discussions of moral issues? It’s unclear - the idea that science and religion bump up against one another is very puzzling. How is he thinking the two domains are intertwined? What exactly, does he take the moral claims to be?

He says (4 paragraphs from end) that he prefers the “moral position” that nature can be cruel. What does he mean by this? Why is this a “moral position?”

 

2) Religions take strong stances on moral issues. (Varying sides of those issues, sometimes.) Suppose that you are trying to think about some difficult issue, e.g., the death penalty. Perhaps his claim is that science cannot resolve the issue of whether we should execute people. But it can contribute lots of relevant information - about the deterrent effect, uniformity of application, etc. One view is that all of that is completely irrelevant to this and all other moral views. That’s an extreme view. Strikes me as preposterous.

 

3) So to assess the premise of the argument we need to understand what is meant by “conflict”. Two interpretations.

 

Conflict₁: Statements from one domain conflict with statements from another domain =df statements from the one domain entail the falsity of statements from the other domain.

 

Applied to the case: moral statements and scientific statements conflict just in case there are some scientific statements that entail the falsity of some moral statements. Thus, there would have to be entailments like this:

 

S1: Voluntary human activity contributes significantly to global warming.

S2: If global warming continues, then the polar ice will melt, water levels will rise, many species will become extinct, farmland will become unusable and food supplies will diminish, there will be deadly heatwaves and droughts, ...

 

M: Humans should modify their activity in order to contribute less to global warming.

 

If (S1) and (S2) and the like combine to entail M, then they conflict₁ with ~M.

 

A common view is that nothing along the lines of (S1) and (S2) - even when supplemented with more detailed science - will entail anything like M. As they say, no “ought” can be derived from an “is”. If there can be no entailments, then there can be no conflicts₁ either. On this view, to get a moral conclusion, you need a moral premise. In this case, something like: we should do what we can to prevent

 

But there is a second sense of “conflict”

 

Conflict₂: Statements from one domain conflict with statements from another =df statements from the one domain can provide evidence that undermines the rationality of believing statements in the other domain.

 

If the alleged scientific facts like S1, S2 can provide evidence for M, then these facts conflict₂ with the moral claim that it is acceptable to continue our present behavior.

 

Conclusion: premise 3 of Gould’s argument is plausible when taken to be about conflict₁ but not when taken to be about conflict₂. But to maintain the “separate magisteria” idea, he seems to need conflict₂. Actual moral claims about the world do seem to depend for their defense in part upon the facts.

 

4) A final comment: There’s another idea about science and religion getting along. This is a sociological thesis: both are important to people’s sense of well-being. That might be true. One might advise people not to think too hard about apparent conflicts - do your science during the week, and go to church on the weekend. Don’t worry if some of what you get in one place doesn’t square so well with what you get at the other. Maybe this is good advice. But the no conflicts thesis goes way beyond that.