Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T09:25:37.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Science1 and Religion: Their Logical Similarity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

John F. Miller III
John F. Miller III
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, University of South Florida
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his “Theology and Falsification” Professor Antony Flew challenges the sophisticated religious believer to state under what conceivable occurrences he would concede that there really is no God Who loves mankind:

‘Just what would have to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also, logically and rightly, to entitle us to say “God does not love us” or even “God does not exist”? I therefore put…the simple central questions, “What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the existence of, God”?’

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , October 1969 , pp. 49 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 51 note 1 Planck, Max, The Philosophy of Physics, p. 53.Google Scholar

page 51 note 2 For specific problems, this principle is assumed before deductions can be made and insures that the total increase of energy of a system is equal to the net work done on the system, which is tantamount to asserting that total energy is constant.

page 52 note 1 One may ask, if this is so, whether these first-order statements can then be considered ‘factual’. Strictly speaking, one might be inclined to deny this. This would mean, as the positivists and a host of philosophers criticising religion have urged, that these important religious statements are not factual. But similarly we would also have to deny that the law of causation and the law of conservation of energy are factual. We may not want to do this. But in any case, if the religious ones are non-factual, so too are the scientific ones; and if the scientific ones are factual, so too are the religious ones. It seems to me that ‘factual’ is merely an honorific term: ‘facts’ are what is based upon evidence, but evidence is determined by the Weltanschauung with its concepts, categories, and first-order principles.

page 53 note 1 Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science, Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc., New York, 1961, pp. 65–6.Google Scholar

page 55 note 1 The inclusion of this point is to demonstrate that Flew's challenge rests upon the verification principle of meaning, specifically in that it considers empirical evidence alone as admissible—a clearly moot assumption.

page 57 note 1 Planck, , op. cit., p. 53Google Scholar

page 58 note 1 Planck, , op. cit., p. 55.Google Scholar

page 58 note 2 Perhaps it would be better to view causation and determinism as the necessary conditions for the possibility of science as we now have it. For it may be that these principles stipulate what can and cannot be science, rather than being principles which science uses in accordance with which to adduce evidence. However, this may be merely a linguistic distinction without any methodological value: perhaps methodologically the two amount to the same thing.

page 59 note 1 Nagel, Ernest, op. cit., p. 292. ‘According to this definition, a theory is deterministic if, and only if, given the values of its state variables for some initial period, the theory logically determines a unique set of values for those variables for any other period. If this definition is adopted, it is incorrect to deny that a theory is deterministic on either of the following two grounds: on the ground that a theory does not establish such unique one-to-one correspondences between the values at different times of every set of magnitudes mentioned by the theory; or on the ground that experimentally measured values of theoretical state variables are not in precise agreement with their theoretically calculated ones.’Google Scholar

page 59 note 2 Nagel, Ernest, op. cit., p. 291.Google Scholar

page 59 note 3 Planck, , op. cit., pp. 51–2.Google Scholar

page 59 note 4 Planck, , op. cit., p. 63.Google Scholar

page 60 note 1 Planck, op. cit., pp. 63–4.

page 60 note 2 Frank, , Modern Science and its Philosophy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1949, p. 163.Google Scholar

page 60 note 3 Nagel, , op. cit., p. 301.Google Scholar

page 61 note 1 Nagel, , op cit., p. 303.Google Scholar

page 61 note 2 The qualifications following do not apply to causality in quantum mechanics only, but in general.

page 61 note 3 Cf. Henri Poincaré's Science and Hypothesis and The Value of Science Poincaré makes the point that the law of inertia, the law of conservation of energy, the law of casuality are conventional, not open to verification or falsification.

page 61 note 4 Cf. Nagel, , op. cit., pp. 292–3.Google Scholar

page 61 note 5 Frank, , op. cit.Google Scholar

page 62 note 1 Planck, , op. cit., p. 53.Google Scholar

page 62 note 2 Planck, , op. cit., p. 65.Google Scholar

page 62 note 3 Planck, , op. cit., p. 66.Google Scholar

page 62 note 4 Schlick, Moritz, ‘Causality in Contemporary Physics’, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. XII (February 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 62 note 5 Nagel, , op. cit., pp. 82–3.Google Scholar

page 63 note 1 Nagel, , op. cit., p. 320.Google Scholar

page 63 note 2 Nagel, , op. cit., p. 323.Google Scholar

page 63 note 3 Nagel, , op. cit., p. 320.Google Scholar

page 63 note 4 Planck, , op. cit., p. 53.Google Scholar

page 63 note 5 Planck, op. cit., pp. 55–7.Google Scholar

page 63 note 6 Planck, , op. cit., p. 56.Google Scholar

page 63 note 7 Planck, , op. cit., p. 64.Google Scholar

page 64 note 1 Frank, , op. Cit., p. 59.Google Scholar

page 65 note 1 Toulmin, Stephen, The Philosophy of Science, Harper Torchbooks, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1960, p. 17.Google Scholar

page 65 note 2 ibid., p. 20.

page 65 note 3 ibid., p. 93.

page 65 note 4 ibid., p. 29.

page 66 note 1 Toulmin, Stephen, The Philosophy of Science, p. 93.Google Scholar

page 66 note 2 ibid., p. 34.

page 66 note 3 ibid., pp. 42–3.

page 66 note 4 ibid., p. 80.

page 67 note 1 Toulmin, Stephen, The Philosophy of Science, pp. 88–9Google Scholar

page 67 note 2 ibid., p. 132.

page 67 note 3 ibid.

page 67 note 4 Cf. Nagel, , op. cit., p. 67.Google Scholar

page 67 note 5 Toulmin, Stephen, ‘Scientific Theories and Scientific Myths’, in Science and Language, Bock, Alfred M., ed., Heath & Company, Boston, 1966, p. 18.Google Scholar

page 67 note 6 ibid., p. 18.

page 68 note 1 Cassirer, , Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der Moderner Physik, quoted in Frank, op. cit., p. 178.Google Scholar