Following up on our recent discussion here on science and religion and a couple of links to reviews of Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion provided by Shunya, I point readers to a lively post by Razib on Gene Expression. Razib argues that Dawkins has every right to debate theology (I believe we all do) even if his take on the matter is unsophisticated and perhaps even uneducated in the conventional sense. The mistake Dawkins makes, in his opinion, is that he employs scientific arguments to persuade against theology. Razib and his readers have their own theories about faith and rationality, not all of it my cup of tea. An interesting read nonetheless.
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3 responses to “Speaking Out of Turn?”
let me be clear and contend that the problem is that dawkins enter the domain of ‘the enemy,’ and by standing his ground and giving due cause of his belligerence he does legitimate the claim that ‘the enemy’ makes upon the land of the living.
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Razib opines that Theology can be rejected or overlooked because it is based on presuppositions. However, presuppositions are implicitly a part of, and define, every closed system. Now, an argument can be made that science is not a closed “system” per se and thus it is not based on pre-suppositions. However, Thomas Kuhn argued way back in 1975 that Science as a whole is in fact a closed system that works along a tacit pre-suppositionist paradigm called Reductionism. It is presuppositionist because, to this day, there is no independent, objective proof
(1) that the reductionist approach is the best/ optimum/ only way to do science
(2) that the reductionist approach will ever lead to the ultimate truth/ God etc
Yet, the scientific establishment goes about doing science in a reductionist manner without questioning this basic assumption. This is pre-suppositionist.
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yes sanjay, i stated that.
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