Religion and science debates and their significance for philosophy of religion

Question 1

What are the three stages of the scientific method?

Answer 1

1. Observation- seeing the apple fall from the tree. 2. Hypotheses- there might be a force which attracts the apple to earth. 3. Experimentation, testing and the formulation of a law.

Question 2

How can inductive and deductive reasoning go wrong?

Answer 2

1. Scientists once inductively concluded that all swans were white until a black swan was discovered in Australia, things cannot be inductively proven as we can’t be sure we’ve done all possible observations. 2. Deductive conclusions are only correct if the premises are correct.

Question 3

What are the two religious approaches to testing if beliefs are correct?

Answer 3

1. Fideism- drawing on personal religious experience. 2. Critical rationalism- drawing on rational arguments.

Question 4

How does fideism work?

Answer 4

Fideists do not need proof for their beliefs, all they need is the belief itself. To look for proof is to deny the very point of faith.

Question 5

What two tests must beliefs pass in order to be accepted by critical rationalist?

Answer 5

1. They must be rational. 2. They must not go against empirical science.

Question 6

How do critical rationalists use both types of proof to argue for the existence of god?

Answer 6

1. The ontological argument tries to prove god deductively through reason alone. 2. The cosmological and teleological arguments argue inductively for the existence of god from the existence of the universe.

Question 7

Give two issues with the religious method

Answer 7

1. Its results are not repeatable, we can’t rerun a religious experience to make sure it happened as was said. 2. Some such as persinger claim it is possible to evoke religious feelings through brain lobe stimulation.

Question 8

How does Hume define a miracle?

Answer 8

1. It breaks a law of nature. 2. It is brought about by god. 3. It happens through god’s will and has a purpose.

Question 9

What is a working definition of a miracle based on Hume’s argument?

Answer 9

1. It is caused by a god. 2. It breaks a law of nature. 3. It has purpose. 4. It is verifiable

Question 10

What is the biggest challenge to miracles?

Answer 10

A miracle would break scientific laws, so could not happen. Events regarded as miracles stem from a lack of knowledge, Jesus did not walk on water, but on submerged stones.

Question 11

What is Spinoza’s argument against miracles?

Answer 11

1. Miracles are violations of natural laws. 2. Natural laws are immutable. 3. Immutable laws can’t be violated, or there is no basis for science. C. Miracles are therefore impossible and are absurdities.

Question 12

What is the god of the gaps?

Answer 12

In early communities, little was known of science, so god was used to fill gaps in knowledge. As our knowledge increased, god was pushed out of many of the gaps. One day he will be pushed out of all of the gaps.

Question 13

Give four strengths of the scientific position on miracles

Answer 13

1. Science can use reliable methods to test miracle claims, the Turin shroud has been debunked by carbon-14 dating. 2. If scientific laws are violated by miracles, there really is no basis for science. 3. Science works with what it general and repeatable. 4. God of the gaps is a strong argument.

Question 14

What are three weaknesses of the scientific position on miracles?

Answer 14

1. If miracles do happen it is simply a fact the science can’t investigate them. 2. How can Spinoza prove that scientific laws are immutable? 3. Science is on weak grounds when it rejects miracles on the basis for being singular and unrepeatable when much of science is based on a singularity- the Big Bang.

Question 15

Explain the Big Bang theory

Answer 15

13.7 billion years ago all of the matter in the universe was condensed into one dense, hot point, this exploded, flinging matter in all directions. As material expanded from this point, it cooled and around 400 million years after the Big Bang the first stars started to form.

Question 16

Give three ways in which the Big Bang theory challenges religious belief

Answer 16

1. It happened 13.7 billion years ago, not the 4000 years posited in the Bible. 2. If the Bible is wrong about creation, it could be wrong about other things. 3. Religion is not a pick and mix affair, if we reject the creation, we should reject the rest of the Bible.

Question 17

How can the being bang theory fit with religious beliefs?

Answer 17

It can be seen as the mechanism used by god to bring the universe into being. The Bible is not to be taken literally.

Question 18

Give two other theories about the creation of the universe

Answer 18

1. Hoyle’s steady state theory of the 1960 which suggests that the universe has always existed in the state it is in now, new matter is always coming into existence to compensate for the death of stars. 2. Everett’s multiverse theory, there are an infinite number of universes and whatever could possibly happen happens in one of them. They all come into existence as part of the quantum mechanical processes that define reality.

Question 19

What is creationism?

Answer 19

The idea that the creation story is literal, that god created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th.

Question 20

Give five creationist beliefs

Answer 20

1. All species were created instantaneously. 2. The 6 days of creation were 6 24 hour days. 3. The flood spoken of was real and destroyed all life save for what was on Noah’s ark. 4. Adam and Eve are the ancestors of the entire human race. 5. Dinosaurs can be explained with references to monsters in the Bible such as behemoth.

Question 21

Give three arguments against creationism

Answer 21

1. The scientific evidence for the Big Bang seems overwhelming. 2. The 6 day story was more to do with Shabbat. 3. Even if the flood did happen, nothing proves it was an act of god.

Question 22

What is the background to intelligent design?

Answer 22

It originated in the USA in 1987 when courts ruled that creation science which was being taught in some schools was just religion dressed up as science.

Question 23

What does intelligent design seek to prove?

Answer 23

Several features of the universe are best explained by the activities of an intelligent designer. 1. The universe shows evidence of irreducible complexity. 2. Irreducible complexity can only be explained by intellect. 3. Ergo, there was an intelligent designer.

Question 24

Give three major challenges to intelligent design

Answer 24

1. Given a large number of changes over millions of years it would be possible for something as complex as the eye to develop. 2. ID science ha led to no insights into biology and no testable hypotheses. 3. Evolution can be completely compatible with religious beliefs, yet ID science rejects it.

Question 25

Give the background of evolutionary theory

Answer 25

Darwin proposed that nature selects a being’s characteristics which make it more likely to survive, these then get passed down generations. Evolution is gradual and works through the recombination of genetic material, ordered by natural section.

Question 26

Give six ways evolution challenges Christian thinking

Answer 26

1. Humans are not the peak of creation, we have simply evolved to have a large forebrain. 2. We do not have dominion over plants and animals. 3. We could not have all come from a single ancestral pair. 4. The beauty of the world can be explained without god. 5. We do not need god to explain the process of evolution, it works through genes.

Question 27

Are science and religion completely incompatible?

Answer 27

Only if you take a literal interpretation of the Bible or other holy scriptures, or if you follow the kind of scientific fundamentalism which will always oppose religion.

Question 28

What does Dawkins say about Darwin’s theory?

Answer 28

Darwin’s theory shows that evolution is a blind process that happens through random natural selection, there is no purpose or plan.

Question 29

What else does Dawkins say about religious belief?

Answer 29

Creation science is not science at all. If complex systems have to have explanations for their existence, then god needs something even more complex to explain him. He sees the idea of a personal god who interacts with his creation as wishful thinking.

Question 30

What is the Gaia hypothesis?

Answer 30

Lovelock’s idea that the world is a self regulating organism which shows harmony and interdependence between all biotic and abiotic elements on earth.