The Boundaries of Science

[_beastie]

I can't add much to what's already been said, other than to simply comment that, at any given moment in time, of course science has had boundaries. They tend to be pushed back as time goes on. But it's probably reasonable to guess that there will always be some sort of boundary, due to insufficient information or lack of human capabilities.

But, to me, it's clear that science has a better track record than religion. Of course there have been lots of mistakes along with way, but science is constructed to allow for corrections. (some individuals may go kicking and screaming, but the corrections will rule, in the end, because that is the nature of science)

When it comes to life and death, most people (not all) will trust science over religion without a second's thought. If you possibly have a serious medical disorder, would you rather have medical tests like MRIs done, or go to a priest and have him pray to find out what's wrong with you?

Moreover, the fact that defenders of religion or other supernatural claims try to dress up their claims in scientific sounding jargon is, in and of itself, an overwhelming testament to the fact that most human beings today trust science to produce more reliable and accurate results than religion or other supernatural venues. So dressing up claims in scientific jargon bestows a certain amount of credibility (whether the claims stand up or are pseudoscience is another question altogether, and, again, one that science is more reliable at answering)

[_Gorman]

Yeah, I probably should have explained better. I was hurrying to post the list. I think the title might have been a little misleading.

The boundaries I have listed are for the science that I would consider very close to fully understood, and the type that I expect to not change much in the future. Of course, I trust a very large amount of science that is outside the boundary, but I also figure that the possibility that we are interpreting the data incorrectly at that point may be higher. If we are interpreting the data only slightly incorrectly, this can change the conclusions of science very much. In this sense, a better title would have been "The boundary of science for which large changes in our fundamental understanding of the universe most likely won't change".

The boundary that I was trying to get at was the boundary for which religious claims should be addressed by science. In my opinion, religion probably should be held accountable for the type of science that is inside the boundary that I have listed. Outside this boundary there is enough uncertainty in the conclusions that religion could be given a little slack. Far away from the boundary, neither science nor religion have any verifiability to their claims.

There is some science outside of this boundary that I would still possibly consider that religion should be held accountable to as well (the boundary as I have listed it is far from perfect), but only those that deal strictly with cause and effect of experiments (i.e. when we poke this thing, such and such happens). For example, Number 5 in my list puts Biology entirely outside the boundary, but I still think that the experimental aspect of Biology should not be disregarded (i.e. we should still go to the doctor and take our medicine). The theoretical aspect on the other hand is extremely far from fully understood.

I will address some of the comments in detail later, as I have again run out of time.

[_Gorman]

In quickly re-reading the posts to this. I think that my above comment clears up a lot of the misunderstanding about the OP. If any of you would still like to hold to your rejections of the OP in light of this last comment I made, I will respond to your comments.

[_John Larsen]

Outside this boundary there is enough uncertainty in the conclusions that religion could be given a little slack.

Why should religion be given more slack outside of these boundaries? You can try to rule this area outside of proper science, but I don't think you have made any case as to why it should be the domain of religion.

Indeed, since all of religion occurs inside your boundaries, every religious claim should be open to scientific inquiry and validation.

John

[_The Dude]

"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." -- JBS Haldane, founder of population genetics.

We may not be able to test some true scenarios simply because we cannot imagine them in the form of testable hypotheses.

[Guest]

Outside this boundary there is enough uncertainty in the conclusions that religion could be given a little slack.

Why should religion be given more slack outside of these boundaries? You can try to rule this area outside of proper science, but I don't think you have made any case as to why it should be the domain of religion.

Indeed, since all of religion occurs inside your boundaries, every religious claim should be open to scientific inquiry and validation.

John

I have not attempted to make religion master of this outer domain. I have merely stated that the fundamental conclusions of science outside this domain are not certain. If you agree with this, then things that may appear to conflict between science and religion at this point in time may be later shown to not actually conflict. Far away from this border, science cannot say anything that can withstand any sort of scrutiny (neither can religion, but they don't really need to according to their own definitions).

Religion does occur inside the boundaries in that there are church buildings around, but it rarely addresses phenomena that reside inside that boundary. When it does, it may need to be compared with our scientific understanding.

[_Gorman]

"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." -- JBS Haldane, founder of population genetics.

We may not be able to test some true scenarios simply because we cannot imagine them in the form of testable hypotheses.

Agreed. We mainly just suffer from lack of information or knowledge.

[_Who Knows]

There are no 'boundaries' to science. Well, I guess I should say, the only 'boundaries' to science are the rules of science.

[_John Larsen]

The argument here seems to be that since science has boundaries (areas that it will not or cannot penetrate explanatory) that this is somehow an argument for religion.

I grant you that there are things that science most likely will never explain, but in my mind that does not help the case of religion at all.

For example, some scientists believe that the many factors that contribute to weather patterns are so complicated, numerous and minute that they may never be fully modeled. Thus the inner workings of weather may be beyond scientific understand. But this does not at all yield the idea that the rain gods controls the weather. If science cannot explain it, it does not automatically fall into the dominion of religion.

Religions claim to derive power, authority or knowledge from some mystic force out there. you seem to be saying that since there is an "out there" beyond science that supports religion. This is like saying: "people keep money in banks, there are lots of banks, therefore I have money." But to extend this metaphor, we have yet to establish that banks or money exist (figuratively speaking).

As to the argument that apparent contradiction between religion and science can be resolved in favor of religion: can you give me one example of this happening, ever?

John

[_Analytics]

This thread makes me think of a few things I’ve been reading elsewhere. On MAD, The Dude raised a question about chimeras, including people who have genes that are half male and half female. The question is, how do such people fit into the Proclamation on the Family where having a clear-cut gender is an essential part of your being?

There isn’t a great answer for LDS. On the one hand, people will say that God wouldn’t make mistakes regarding your sex, and if your spirit tells you that you’re a female stuck in a man’s body, you are misinterpreting what your spirit is saying and should try to conform your spiritual inclinations to your physical body.

But the fact that chimeras exist proves that this view is incorrect; if your dna is half male and half female, and if your spirit is either male or female, then a mistake must have been made. If a female (spirit) could accidentally find herself with 50% male dna, why couldn’t she accidentally find herself with 100% male dna?

YH8 said some contradictory things on the thread, on the one hand saying that we should conform our bodies to the spirit, but on the other hand claiming that God wouldn’t screw up by sending a female spirit to a male body. Rather than dealing directly with the issue the Dude raised, he said,

I'll stick with looking at the big picture of LDS doctrine rather than taking an electron microscope to an obscure point and getting all worked up (In other words, looking beyond the mark, perhaps).

What this thinking makes me think of is Einstein’s theory of relativity. Some puzzles of science involved things like the speed of light—why did it always appear to be going at the same rate, irrespective of whether the earth was moving towards the sort of the light or moving away from the source of the light? And why did Mercury have a screwy orbit that was measurably different from what Newton’s equations predicted?

Einstein came up with new theories that threw our intuitive understanding of space and time on its head, but with a remarkable degree of precision perfectly explains every piece of data we’ve been able to throw at it.

Now, one could argue that we shouldn’t “look beyond the mark” and get too worked up and avoid taking an electron microscope (or telescope) to these relatively obscure points. Indeed, that seems to be the way of faith; don’t test your beliefs—don’t push them to the limit to see what happens. They’ll even do this with physics—Mormons will occasionally speculate that Einstein must have been wrong about the nature of space and time because God couldn’t be a space traveler who hears our prayers if Einstein’s right.

It seems to me that science deals with energy, matter, space, and time. If Elohim is out there, he is a physical being in space, and in principle could submit himself to a physical examanation. If there is some sort of “spiritual” energy out there that can somehow interface with our physical bodies, then in principle a way to objectively detect, quantify, and analyze this spiritual energy must exist. To the extent something is beyond the scope of science it is beyond the energy and matter with which we interact in space and time and is therefore irrelevant.