🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <74353@hydra.gatech.EDU>, cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd) writes:

|> It is true that there are many scientists who are religious.  It is also
|> true that there are many religious people who are scientifically minded or
|> at least take an interest in science.  However, there are two very different
|> modes of thought in operation here.

How surprising, I (very nearly) agree with you now (I still think your 
definition of "meaning" has grave philosophical problems, but the world is 
full of philosophical problems, so who cares?).  Part of the problem has been 
that some posters have taken the point of view, roughly speaking, that the 
two don't mix because only idiots are religious and idiots can't do physics; 
this is bound to make religious physicists a bit cranky.

|> These two modes of thought are mutually exclusive.  Neither can encompass
|> the other:  they cannot be mixed.  You can think mystically or rationally,
|> but you cannot do both at the same time.  People who call themselves
|> "religious" and "scientific" are not being completely honest.  You can
|> be religious *or* scientific; you cannot be both simultaneously.

I have only a couple of quibbles.  One was pointed out in an early post in 
this thread: while the two activities are quite different, there is some 
leakage in practice between them, at least at the psychological level.  One's 
religious beliefs (and philosophy, and economic and social position, etc.) 
may have some influence on the particular form a scientist's theorizing takes 
(off-hand I can't see any comparable effect for an experimentalist); similarly, 
one's science (along with all of the other factors) may have an influence on 
how one approaches religion.  Second, precisely because they are quite 
different modes of thought, you can actually do them at the same time.  A 
religious person may worship God by studying slime molds, rather as one can 
also be earning a living while doing science: neither one has any impact on how 
the science is done.  This in no way contradicts your point.
	Finally, I do think that doing science requires a prior commitment to 
a world-view in a way that is not wholly unlike that found in religion.  But 
this is at a deep (you might say meaningless) level that does not come up in 
the daily practice of science, and the latter is, after all, the thing that 
most scientists are interested in.
	My impression is that this thread has just about been done to death 
by now.


-- 
Steve Schaffner        sschaff@unixhub.slac.stanford.edu
	The opinions expressed may be mine, and may not be those of SLAC, 
Stanford University, or the DOE.