Wise religion comforts poor scientists

[Ray Moscow]

OK, I saw this essay in yesterday's NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/science/02essay.html?_r=3&8dpc), and since Jerry Coyle's blog (http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/dennis-overbye-on-faith-vs-scienc/) took up the issue I figured we might want to discuss it, too.

This may seem like a happy ending. Faith and science reconciled or at least holding their fire in the face of mystery. But for me that moment ruined what had otherwise been a pleasant two hours on a rainy afternoon. It crystallized what is wrong with the entire way that popular culture regards science. Scientists and academics are smart, but religious leaders are wise.

These smart alecks who know how to split atoms and splice genes need to be put in their place by older steadier hands.

It was as if the priest had patted Einstein on the head and chuckled, “Never mind, Sonny, some day you’ll understand.” . . . .

. . . But I can’t help being bugged by that warm, fuzzy moment at the end, that figurative pat on the head. After all is said and done, it seems to imply, having faith is just a little bit better than being smart. . . .

. . . And they are still patting us on the head.

As I come from a strong religious background, I was rather used to this attitude of religion to science. Nowadays, however, it just pisses me off.

Where is the "wisdom" in these supposedly "wise" spiritual traditions, anyway? Why should we expect them to be wiser, or even anywhere near as wise, as teachers or practitioners of science, engineering, or other reality-based disciplines?

[Preno]

Mr. Hanks as the Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon has just exposed the archvillain who was threatening to blow up the Vatican with antimatter stolen from a particle collider.Boy am I glad I didn't go see that movie.

[Ray Moscow]

I kind of liked the book. Not a particularly good piece of literature, but it's a fun page turner.

[Eudaimonist]

I would ask: wise about what?

About the natural world? I would put my money on the scientists.

About theology? The religious leaders may have the edge.

About how to live your life? It could be about even.



eudaimonia,

Mark

[tjakey]

I would ask: wise about what?

About the natural world? I would put my money on the scientists.

About theology? The religious leaders may have the edge.

About how to live your life? It could be about even.



eudaimonia,

Mark

Let's see what religion says about living your life...

Hate people who are not like you (particularly if they are gay)...
People who don't believe in god just like you are going to go to hell...
...so killing them off is kind of okay, in fact it gets you right into heaven...
Poverty and pain are good for you, makes you pure, gives god the grins...
Give us your money, god needs it...
We know what god wants, he told us, so you have to listen to us...

No thanks, I think I'll go with science.

[Ray Moscow]

To echo TJ, I think religions have a lot to say about life. I just don't think much of it is accurate or wise.

[BioBeing]

Science cannot questions like "why are we here"?

Religion thinks it can.

Religion is supremely arrogant in that regard, as each says they are right, and all others are wrong. All without any evidence one way or the other. But a lot of people like the comfort of that smug self-assurance. Which is why, I think, religion is seen as wise.

[Worldtraveller]

tjakey left off one of the most important things religion says about humans:

We are all born irredeemably flawed and don't deserve to inhabit the earth. Unless, of course, one worships the imiginary bastard that supposedely made us that way. :bang:

[Matty]

We are all born irredeemably flawed
yet perfectly designed at the same time. ;)

[tjakey]

Well shit World, if I tried to list all of the BS that religion tells us about living, I would still be typing. In fact I would be typing for a long, long...long time.

But you are right about that being at the top of the "idiocy" list.

[lpetrich]

Mr. Hanks as the Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon has just exposed the archvillain who was threatening to blow up the Vatican with antimatter stolen from a particle collider.Boy am I glad I didn't go see that movie.
Did the movie address the question of confining that antimatter so it does not react prematurely with all the ordinary matter around it? Or the energy return of particle-accelerator antimatter production?

I once looked for figures for the energy budget of a particle accelerator, and I could only find some figures for a medical accelerator. It may have been able to produce positrons, but not (I think) antiprotons or antineutrons. A big problem there is that an accelerator will produce a LOT of other particles, which will then decay. Some of their energy could be recoverable as heat, but any that goes into neutrinos will be lost.

Turning to storing the produced antimatter, it could either be stored as separate particles circulating in an elementary-particle storage ring, or it could be stored in macroscopic form.

Macroscopic antimatter will have all the macroscopic properties of its ordinary-matter counterparts, except for reversed electric charges. The easiest macroscopic antimatter to make is antimatter hydrogen or antihydrogen, because one will not have to assemble nuclei contain several antinucleons. It will share with ordinary hydrogen its very low melting and boiling points, 14 and 20 K at 1 bar pressure, meaning that it will have to be chilled to a few K to keep from boiling off. However, it will also share ordinary hydrogen's weak diamagnetism, meaning that it can be held in place with a sufficiently powerful magnetic field. Diamagnetism has some nice pictures of this sort of magnetic levitation.

Summary: making antimatter is extremely energy-inefficient and storing it requires humongously expensive equipment.

[Preno]

Actually, I don't mind the blatant unphysicality of it as much as the fact that "antimatter" is pretty much the cheapest, most generic boogyman there is in the scifi closet.

[tjakey]

Ah come on lpetrich, all it takes is some dilithum crystals and a tuning fork looking thing...

[Jobar]

You can store antimatter in a Slaver stasis field, too.

Just don't be anywhere near when the field is shut off.

;)

Really we're rather a long way from being able to work with antimatter in any form- even for such a laudable goal as blowing up the Vatican.

:D

[tjakey]

Besides,anti-matter is probably a bit of overkill for the Vatican. Alll we really need is one youtube vid of the Pope porking a Cardenal or some DNA tests that prove he as a bunch of Popepetts running around somewhere.

[MrFungus420]

Besides,anti-matter is probably a bit of overkill for the Vatican. Alll we really need is one youtube vid of the Pope porking a Cardenal or some DNA tests that prove he as a bunch of Popepetts running around somewhere.

But choir boys can't get pregnant... :evil:

[tjakey]

Good point MrFungus, though I find it hard to believe that the Pope hasn't popped a young, wanna-be Nun or two over the years.

[Ray Moscow]

OK, perhaps this is better discussed on the religion board, but:

I've heard that it's "common knowledge" that the current pope had a long-term mistress and kids by her, and that there was a big fight about him wanting to bring her to Rome to live near him, but I've not been able to find anything in writing to substantiate this.

Kudos to those who do so.

Or is this just a viscous, unsubtaniated slur on his pointy-hattedness? I have to assume that it's just a rumour unless someone comes up with some evidence.

[Hex]

Science cannot questions like "why are we here"?

Not so. I just think that the answers that science turns up don't satisfy many people who still think that we're at the top of the 'Great Chain of Being', and thus need to have a 'higher purpose' than the 'base animals' ... ;)

[DMB]

Besides,anti-matter is probably a bit of overkill for the Vatican. Alll we really need is one youtube vid of the Pope porking a Cardenal or some DNA tests that prove he as a bunch of Popepetts running around somewhere.

They'd find some way of brushing over it and making it not too bad. After all, it would be nothing to what a lot of previous popes got up to.