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Intelligence Squared - Science refutes God
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Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
This is a debate from Intelligence Squared that poses the topic Science refutes God. On the pro side are Lawrence Krauss professor and author of A Universe From Nothing and Michael Shermer founding editor of Skeptic magazine. On the other side are Dinesh D'Souza author of What's So Great About Christianity and Ian Hutchinson professor at MIT. Both sides made good points and in my opinion won certain aspects of the debate. I really enjoyed this debate, Andy McDowell even makes a cameo. 
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/iq2-tv/item/785-science-refutes-god
Intelligence Squared has lots of other really good debates on a wide range of topics from Men Are Finished to Legalize Drugs to When It Comes To Politics, The Internet Is Closing Our Minds. The moderator, John Donvan of ABC news, poses a topic at the start and the audience votes whether they are in favor, opposed or undecided towards it, the debate occurs and at the end the audience votes again and the side that changes the most minds is declared the winner.
The unedited debates generally run a little over an hour and a half, there are edited audio version that air on public radio that run in around 50 minutes too. To get the video go to the IQ2.TV tab and pick a debate from there.
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/iq2-tv
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/iq2-tv/item/785-science-refutes-god
Intelligence Squared has lots of other really good debates on a wide range of topics from Men Are Finished to Legalize Drugs to When It Comes To Politics, The Internet Is Closing Our Minds. The moderator, John Donvan of ABC news, poses a topic at the start and the audience votes whether they are in favor, opposed or undecided towards it, the debate occurs and at the end the audience votes again and the side that changes the most minds is declared the winner.
The unedited debates generally run a little over an hour and a half, there are edited audio version that air on public radio that run in around 50 minutes too. To get the video go to the IQ2.TV tab and pick a debate from there.
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/iq2-tv
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1VTMs7PSIM4
Science is about how. God is about why.
And, how did the first particle come to be?
For the record I was on the side against the motion and wasn't moved off that opinion, but I still thought it was interesting and informative to hear the thoughts back and forth.
I think it's safe to say....
If we could put a monetary value on each adult human life - let's set that value at 10 million dollars, ok? -- what would be the wise thing to do; stash it away and spend a lifetime trying to figure out where that 10 million came from, how long will it last, will there be more if you spend it all, how should it be shared- or not shared with others, is there a right way to spend it or a wrong way to spend it..... or should you just LIVE day to day as best you can, knowing what is expected from you morally and ethically anyway (because our societies set most of those rules anyhow), using that money wisely but freely to accomplish a happy, productive, healthy life for you and your families? I vote for the latter.
Frankly, I don't think God gives a crap if you believe in him or not. I think that's totally missing his point- IF he does exist. (And no, I don't think he does, anyway).
I just re-read my post above. It comes off as a bit 'snooty' .... or 'snotty'... either way, not so nice. I'm sorry 'bout that.
I promise I didn't mean to come off that way. I still stand by what I said, but I was typing it in a much more 'gentle' tone than comes across, I swear!
Debates such as these, relating to the incompatibility of science and faith, wouldn't be so frequent if God didn't so often intrude into the arena of 'how.' Look at the Christian view on creation for example; the claim that God began the universe IS a scientific claim.
It is not possible to refute an unfalsifiable conjecture.
Science is best reserved for those of us who want to progress our understanding of the universe methodically and intelligently. Religion is for those who want to jump the gun and have all the answers now, even when they just aren't available How can you get to know truth without theory? An unchallenged theory is truth. Certainty doesn't get any better than that. Science is all about acquiring understanding, and subsequently truth.
Can I stop saying truth now?
Also I don't see how Buddhist practice in any way clashes with science, they go hand in hand if anything. And just to better frame what I've said above, I don't consider Buddhism to be a religion in the same sense as Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism and the rest. Buddhism is based on discourse, whereas most other belief systems have a fundamental element of unchangeable dogma. In this sense, Buddhism shares something with science; it is flexible and embraces change and development in understanding
I don't think he's correct in saying that science has tried to fit our understanding into certain parameters. In fact, science constantly redefines it's parameters as theory progresses. His assertion that a wholly physical or materialist model of the universe amounts to 'a form of idolatry' is a little off the mark. It's simply the dominant understanding because of what the evidence suggests.
I really like what he says in the second video though.
'All phenomena are empty of any inherent nature or identity of their own. All phenomena arise relative to the means by which the phenomena themselves are apprehended.'
In that, light, colour, sound, vision etc only exist for us a perception apprehended by our senses. There's loads of stuff in physics relating to those ideas, that the way we perceive the universe is limited. I guess we evolved to survive on the surface of earth, not to comprehend the universe. It's just good that our brains got so much more developed than necessary for the task in hand and we have opportunity to discuss these things!
What Wallace talks about that I really like is using the methods of the contemplative traditions to use a trained and refined introspection to observe our first person view of our mind. He's compared our everyday minds to that of a trained contemplative to Galileo mounting his telescope on a moving camel in a desert storm and saying there's nothing to see here, lets move on.
I really recommend to you Steven Pinker's book, How The Mind Works. He's a brilliant writer, and in this book he very effectively brings the reader up to date on where science is at with understanding the relationship between physical processes which occur in the brain, and consciousness itself. I've been reading it in my uni library over the last few weeks in the gaps between my lectures, really interesting stuff
When mystics who have spent 10s of thousands of hours observing this phenomena say there is more to it than the brain, I'm willing to believe them.
Also, Buddhism has it's share of religious elements and faith -- there are a lot of different schools, some indeed do look an awful lot like religion. One does not have to embrace all of that, but I would beware of overgeneralizing. Buddhism does overall get along quite well with modern science, I agree. Yet, I think sometimes people can be so eager to conflate the two, that the sense of what Buddhism is and contains can get a bit skewed.
Was it Plato who said that physics is never more than a likely story? One of those famous Greeks anyway. This is exactly what it is. The task for physics is to make the story more and more likely. Truth and falsity is another issue entirely.
Pardon me if this is argumentative. It seems an important point.
As a person who is degreed in the sciences, your view of science is rather outdated. It's sort of how scientific thought begins, but we now tend to get to the follow-through and application. And if you don't think your view of science is outdated, then why are you quoting someone about science who lived over 2,000 years ago? Things have changed a tad bit since then.
Yes, we all disgree about the details of our religious views and conjectures. But we are examining them by disagreeing. It is research. To adopt an unfounded view as a substitute for discovering the facts not something any Buddhist does. It is beside the point that Buddhists may disagree about the details. So do scientists and philosophers. But the method requires that they do not adopt views as a substitute for discovering the facts. This would be to abandon the method.
This is true for science and for some religions, and so I could not agree with Simon when he wrote, "Science is best reserved for those of us who want to progress our understanding of the universe methodically and intelligently. Religion is for those who want to jump the gun and have all the answers now, even when they just aren't available."
This is a slur on religion based on the approach of certain religious people, not that of religion in general, and it even says that the answers 'just aren't available' in direct opposition to the Buddha and Buddhist doctrine in general.