UCSD Guestbook: George Coyne the Vatican Observatory

Join Dennis Mammana as he hosts the director of the Vatican Observatory, Fr. George V. Coyne, in a wide ranging discussion on science, religion and the interplay of faith and reason. Series: "UCSD Guestbook" [2/2000] [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 4687]

Category:

Education

Tags:

• science
• religion
• faith
• reason
• Vatican
• Observatory

[aburling7]

@CatholicAmerican Again, that's simply your opinion. Which can be easily proved whong by the way. IF the catholic church "possessed the fullness of truth" then they wouldn't have been wrong on SO many things. They were wrong about the earth being the center of the universe for a couple thousand years. I guess god forgot to tell them that. And they just acknowledged that Evolution is a fact in 1997. Let's see, a full 150 years AFTER it's discovery! They GET thuth from secular thinking and science

[SirDarkStar]

You CAN prove that you love someone (or be caught lying about it) with fMRI. Things that are neurologically-based are difficult but that does not mean they are automatically outside the realm of scientific inquiry.

There are no valid questions that are outside the field of scientific inquiry. Answers to questions that are unanswerable are NOT better discovered through wishful thinking and making them up.

[hpa2005]

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes." Pope John Paul II

[SirDarkStar]

@tomtom002 I'll take my limited "scientism" and conservative epistemological approach over your woo-ism any day.

It is a woo-ism truth that Allah commanded Muhammad to write the Koran because he wanted people to fly planes into buildings on 9/11, they knew it in their little woo-heart and no MERE facts will convince them otherwise. And your religion is exactly the same woo.

[SirDarkStar]

@tomtom002 Did you ask yourself WHY we came up with the various "scientific methodologies"? To eliminate the biases and errors that have lead to false conclusions in the past. If methods in the past WORKED we wouldn't have needed science - we would just free think.

Barron argues a strawman really. Philosophy only explores the REAL in so much as the conclusions are empirically justified. Even the axioms and operators of logic are reduced to the necessary & empirically justified

[tomtom002]

@SirDarkStar You're still assuming science is the only applicable method to answering questions. I've already shown why that can't be and its impossible to answer with that assumption. I would suggest looking up: Fr. Barron on the error of "Scientism" He explains it better than I can.

God bless.

[tomtom002]

@SirDarkStar Well that is a good point, I suppose 'science' can be an ambiguous term and if we have a different meaning in mind, then this argument is useless. When I am saying 'science' I mean the general study of the structure and behavior of the physical world through observation and experiment. I am not sure 'removal of bias and error' has any classification of its own. Science certainly tries to do this within itself, but it is not the function of science.

[SirDarkStar]

@tomtom002 Where is your evidence of this magical dimension of morality? How do you justify a claim that brains can interface with it but it cannot be studied? Is there a magic dimension for every category of human behavior, a hunger dimension? How else could humans know they are hungry?

It's all woo & confirmation bias man. Not a single magical claim has withstood rigorous scientific scrutiny. Most claimants are blatant frauds. How many hucksters have to be exposed?

[SirDarkStar]

@tomtom002 not sure what you think science is, it's not a magic box through which data flows, it is a process which tries to remove bias and errors.

"is it immoral to kill an innocent human being" - I suppose you have missed the rash of books and scientific papers which already ARE studying morality scientifically? Both from attempting to actually define it rigorously as well as fMRI and other empirical measures of brain states.

[tomtom002]

@SirDarkStar The point is, there is a dimension of reality in which science by its own laws cannot study, yet we know it exists because we could not answer questions of morality for example if it did not. This dimension can be studied, but we must accept that the answers are nothing like scientific answers. This is the reality we live in.

[tomtom002]

@SirDarkStar There are rules to philosophy, just as there are rules to science that attempt to remove bias. Just like science they do not always work and things we claim to be ‘true’ may turn out to be false. Yet this does not mean that truth does not exist, just that we must continue to search for it. In science, the majority of the ideas put forth turn out to be wrong, does this mean that science cannot find truth? I think we would both agree that it does not.

[tomtom002]

@SirDarkStar To study does not mean you are using science. Sure you can break down the "question" but there will still be a category that cannot be answered using empirical data and analysis. For example, is it immoral to kill an innocent human being? A valid question I think we would agree but the answer cannot be found scientifically. I can't put morality into a testtube and statistically analyze the results, but we can still discover moral truths which are unbiased.