7 January 2007 – 10:14
After finishing Richard Dawkins’ last book, “The God Delusion” I wanted to write a review on it. However, the book is too large and it covers so many topics. So I have decided to write about only the parts I like or basically I can not disagree (partly or entirely)
In the page 54, Dawkins starts a subchapter titled NOMA. He uses the acronym NOMA for the phrase “Non-overlapping magisteria”. The original acronym comes from Stephen Jay Gould’s book “Rock of Ages”. In this book, the writer claims that religion and science answer different types of questions and their domains do not overlap. Then the conclusion is there should not be a conflict. Here is the paragraph from Gould’s book. I had a little smile on my face when I read the last line of the following paragraph:
The net, or magisterium, of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral values. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the old clichés, science gets the age of rocks, and religion the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens go, religion how to go to heaven. (Page 55, Dawkins R., The God Delusion, 2006, Bantam Press)
Dawkins clearly denies this distinction between religion and science. Firstly, he believes that everything can be explained by science and if there are things which can not be explained by science, it must be because either question is asked wrong or science is not capable enough to answer them yet but sure it will be in the future. He also denies the positions of theologians in the modern society. He asks in the page 56 as an answer to Marteen Rees’ words of there is a space for philosophy and religion beyond science: What expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists can not?
I guess Dawkins here makes a clear distinction for the type of the question which is supposed to be answered by the theologians. Nobody will ask a theologian questions regarding cosmology or cosmogony. They really answer the questions where science –and not other systematic body of knowledge- can not reach. The reason for this is the difference between the natures of religious knowledge (if we can call it knowledge) and scientific knowledge. “People are credulous animals and they find something stupid to believe if there is no good one to fill the gap” says Russell. Scientific knowledge covers empirical world and for scientist/scientifically thinking people, this is the only type of knowledge beside Mathematical knowledge (I believe even Mathematical knowledge comes from experiment) Then what is religious knowledge? It is not systematic, not based on scientific accuracy, and has many contradictions –even though religious people always find reasons to get around these contradictions-. Here is an example for these contradictions and biblical solution: Before the scientist discovered that earth is around 5 billion years old, people used to believe that all history was 6-7 thousand years, starting with Adam and Eve. Whenever scientist found enough evidence to show that earth is much older than what people thought, religious people first rejected those proofs. Then when the proofs became undeniable, they turned to their bible and tried some ad hoc hypotheses on the principles of bible. They said “the bible is written in a metaphorical language and we should not understand it literally”. Nobody asked them why God needed to send us a poetry book to guide our life. Wouldn’t it be easier just to write the rules of the life as well-defined principles (like in definitions in law or in Mathematics)? Can you imagine a computer guide which is written in a metaphoric language? I think half of the people who buy the computer would return the computer for the problems they have caused because they understand the guide literally!
At the beginning of 20th century, logical positivism prevailed to almost all Anglo-Saxon philosophical schools. Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer and many more philosophers, mathematicians, physicists joined them because their claim was fitting with the needs of the age. They had one main theory under all structure: A proposition must be verifiable to have a meaning. If I say ‘there is a book on the table’, this proposition can have a meaning if and only if it can be verified by right methodology. By this way, philosophers achieved to discard the questions like “Does God exist?” or “Is there life after death?”. Basically, these questions were not true questions because the possible answers were not scientifically verifiable. I think this development can be thought as a base for NOMA. There are questions which can be answered by scientific experiments and these questions belong to the realm of the real world. There are also questions which can not be answered by scientific experiments, will never be answered by scientists. These questions could be either ignored or attributed to the religion. Dawkins think that these questions are beyond science but not because they can be answered by any other means. If science can not answer, then who can answer? The holy book which was written 2000 years ago? I agree with him in the sense of ‘why we need religious knowledge to answer the questions which can not be answered by science’ but if science is not able to answer, then don’t we have to make people believe in science and the future of the science so that one day science will solve all the mysteries including the existence of God.
I believe there will be always people who believe in a God (or similar supernatural entities) on this earth no matter how advanced science we will have. As I quoted from Russell, man is a credulous animal and needs to believe something. Saint Augustine says “Once we believe there is an omni-potent God, then no contradiction remains in the universe”. It is absolutely true if we also accept that our logic is controlled by the same omni-scient God. Then whenever we can find a contradiction, we can either attribute it to omni-potent God’s wish or our uncontrollable logical inferences. In this sense I agree with NOMA but I also believe that people should be taught to ignore religious dogmas to advance. There are questions which can not be answered by the science but we can not say that these questions can be answered by religion just because there is no answer yet. At the end, religion is not an alternative for science, it does not fill any gap which is left by the science and it does not deserve any respect as knowledge. If we can not answer the question on the existence of God, we can just ignore it. This way we do not have to deal with religious dogmas/explanations on the issues regarding ethics, daily life and the value of science. The questions which are not answerable by science will remain the same because as I gave an example on ad hoc hypotheses for the text in the bible, people who believe in God will definitely find a new way to get around and skip the claims of scientists.
What we have to do is obvious and Dawkins talks about the solution in different parts of the book. We have to educate young people/children in a way that they will believe only what they can find by their own reasoning. They will think with their own heads and they will only be guided by scientific knowledge in the difficult days of life. They will not be cheated by the attractive heaven scenes because they will never have enough evidence to believe that there is a heaven. Education is the main tool to achieve this aim. The students must learn only empirical knowledge as “knowledge” and beyond the limits of proof there is no place for any other belief.
If we can have a world which does not have religion, then I believe there will be less exploitation, less lies, less tears and fewer wars in the world. At least, I have not seen a man kills a man in the name of science but the world is full of murderers in the name of the God they believe. They fight because they believe in different Gods/religions. That is why the wars never end because none of the fighters can prove that their God is right.
Beside this, religious people can ask that if there is no God, how we can possibly set the moral values. This can be seen through Dostoyevsky’s novel character in Karamazov Brothers. “If there is no God, everything is permitted” says one of the characters in the novel. This might reflect the mental confusion of Dostoyevsky. So if we deny God’s rules, we will be in chaos indefinitely and kill each other until finally humankind is extinct on the earth. Not necessarily! We can live in peace without the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament or any other holy scripture of any religion. They worry about the moral values because they can not think of an ethical system which is independent from religion. But it is quite possible to have an ethical code which can also answer modern life’s problems such as genetic cloning, stem cell research, monitoring the unborn babies during pregnancies to avoid future problems, homosexuality, abortion etc… There are millions of people in this world who do not believe in God and live peacefully. They do not believe in moral codes inherited from the ancestors but they use their reasoning to shape their life. Here is an example which is also mentioned in Dawkins’ book: http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/new10c It may not be perfect but it can be a good beginning for a future reference.
Religion creates an easy base for the people who are in need of urgent help. But still this does not make religion true. I have read “Hastalar Risalesi” (Booklet for Patients) written by Said Nursi when I was students at the university. The main question in this booklet was how we can make a patient happy if he/she does not believe in God and Heaven! If the answer is ‘Yes, a patient must believe in a super-natural power to be strong before his/her death” and if we use this as a proof for existence of God, we are making a big logical mistake. Believing in belief and believing in God are not the same things. It might work and the patient can be happy in his/her last days. He/She might enjoy the company of friends praying for him/her beside the bed. However this happiness does not guarantee that his/her friends are right in their belief and he/she will go to heaven after death. It is all believing in the power of belief. It would not be different if the patient believes in Brahma, Allah, God or Buddha!
Unlike religion, scientific knowledge based on the principles of “change” and “leaving the old one behind”. If a new idea prevails the old one, scientists change it after long term careful investigations. Nobody can say that it is easy to leave a theory behind in favour of another one. However, science is ready for the change if it is necessary. It needs patience, hard-work and ambition. If you look at the life stories of great scientists, you can see how their enthusiasm for the knowledge can lead them to the positions they achieved to hold at the end of their lives.
I would like to finish today’s blog with a nice quote from Einstein.
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in the nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. The idea of personal God is quite alien to me and seems so naïve.
(Page 15, Dawkins R., The God Delusion, 2006, Bantam Press)
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