Thread: The Danger of Religion Stifling Enlightenment

American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, in a speech he gave to the Beyond Belief Symposium, 2006, talked about the 'naming rights' which are naturally assumed by peoples and societies at the vanguard of scientific discovery. In particular, he drew attention to the extraordinarily fertile period of enlightenment within Islamic culture, which lasted for about three hundred years (AD 800 --> 11000). During this period, Baghdad was at the intellectual centre of the world and their culture was completely open to all visitors and travellers--be it Jews, Christians, agnostics, whatever--and where a free exchange of ideas led to major advancements and discoveries in the fields of engineering, and biology, and medicine, and astrology, and mathematics, to name but a few. Two thirds of all the stars we know of today have Arabic names which were given during this period--hence the earlier reference to 'naming rights.'

But something happened to that culture around the twelfth century which put an emphatic stop to all of that. DeGrasse Tyson--rather unfairly in my view--puts most of the blame on the influence of one man, Hamid al-Ghazali. But that is somewhat academic now; regardless of who was to blame for the change--I happen to think it was probably a collective effort by many religiously motivated scholars from the period--the elevation of religious considerations over science saw Islamic nations go from being at the centre of enlightenment to becoming the generally backwards nations that we still consider them to be today, almost nine hundred years later!

Now, deGrasse Tyson's point, of course, is that our own 21st century (Western) culture--which has seen another extraordinary period of enlightenment--could also, if we are not careful, be undermined from within by similar religious considerations. You might think it is different now to then--that what happened to them couldn't possibly happen to us--but I think that is a conceit we can ill afford to assume. Consider the growth of the religious right, which attacks and ridicules scientific discoveries such as evolution and wants intelligent design to be taught alongside science in our children's classrooms. Think how there are battles still raging about whether our societies should separate church from state--many of us thought those issues were settled decades ago, but if anything they are becoming even more problematic now. It is all too easy for us to sit back and think we are probably safe, but I say we need to be as vigilant as ever in upholding and promoting secularism in our countries. What say you?

I think it's counter-productive to focus on secularism. The attack should be on fundamentalists, especially when you consider many of the greatest scientific advancements in history (and in modern times) have been performed by religious individuals.

-JC

Originally Posted by Churlant

I think it's counter-productive to focus on secularism. The attack should be on fundamentalists, especially when you consider many of the greatest scientific advancements in history (and in modern times) have been performed by religious individuals.

-JC

Maybe, but I doubt their religious beliefs had much to do with it. I think it's more that they just happened to make their advancements at a time when most people were religious.

Besides, if you watch the whole of the Neil deGrasse Tyson video I linked to, you will see he talks about Isaac Newton being one of the greatest geniuses ever, but when he reached what he thought was the limit of understanding (pertaining to the movement of the planets), he attributed it to the mystery of God and gave up trying. DeGrasse Tyson asserts that he could have easily gone beyond what he did if it wasn't for his religious beliefs.

Originally Posted by Antagony

Maybe, but I doubt their religious beliefs had much to do with it. I think it's more that they just happened to make their advancements at a time when most people were religious.

The point is they still had faith and they're going to be people that are discounted if we're encouraging secularists.

Besides, if you watch the whole of the Neil deGrasse Tyson video I linked to, you will see he talks about Isaac Newton being one of the greatest geniuses ever, but when he reached what he thought was the limit of understanding (pertaining to the movement of the planets), he attributed it to the mystery of God and gave up trying. DeGrasse Tyson asserts that he could have easily gone beyond what he did if it wasn't for his religious beliefs.

Yes well my laptop is crap and half the time it crashes on vid links. The rest of the time it crashes on pdf links... *sigh*

However if this is Tyson's actual argument, he's missing the forest for a single tree. I mean really - Newton didn't go as far as he could because of his religion? Okay... Einstein limited himself because of the same reason. Sagan didn't go as far as he could because he got himself some cancer. A Russian genius managed to solve Poincare's conjecture and he'll probably never contribute again because he's a recluse.

I'll take what Newton gave us over what he didn't (and why) any day of the week. For someone to pull out an Atheist Crystal Ball (TM) and predict we'd have been even further along if Newton had been an atheist too is not only impossible to know, but also ridiculously naive of human psychology.

-JC

Originally Posted by Churlant

I think it's counter-productive to focus on secularism. The attack should be on fundamentalists, especially when you consider many of the greatest scientific advancements in history (and in modern times) have been performed by religious individuals.

-JC

I tend to agree. Fundamentalists are the real threat to progress, in places like America at least.

Religion isn't the only danger to science. Political considerations also pose dangers. This instance had tragic consequences. I could make the point this situation has a modern parallel.



Trofim Lysenko

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Trofim Lysenko
Lysenko studying wheat
BornSeptember 29, 1898 (1898-09-29)
Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire
(now Ukraine)DiedNovember 20, 1976 (1976-11-21)
Moscow, Soviet Union
NationalityUkrainianFieldsbiologist
agronomistInstitutionsSoviet biologyKnown forLysenkoism
hybridization
rejecting Mendelian inheritanceInfluencesIvan Vladimirovich MichurinTrofim Denisovich Lysenko (Russian: Трофи́м Дени́сович Лысе́нко, Ukrainian: Трохим Денисович Лисенко, Trofym Denysovych Lysenko) (September 29, 1898–November 20, 1976) was a Ukrainian agronomist who was director of Soviet biology under Joseph Stalin. Lysenko rejected Mendeliangenetics in favor of the hybridization theories of Russian horticulturistIvan Vladimirovich Michurin, and adopted them into a powerful political scientific movement termed Lysenkoism. His unorthodox experimental research in improved crop yields earned the support of Soviet leadership, especially following the famine and loss of productivity resulting from forced collectivization in several regions of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s. In 1940 he became director of the Institute of Genetics within the USSR's Academy of Sciences, and Lysenko's anti-Mendelian doctrines were further secured in Soviet science and education by the exercise of political influence and power. Scientific dissent from Lysenko's theories of environmentally acquired inheritance was formally outlawed in 1948, and for the next several years opponents were purged from held positions, and many imprisoned. Lysenko's work was officially discredited in the Soviet Union in 1964, leading to a renewed emphasis there to re-institute Mendelian genetics and orthodox science.
Though Lysenko remained at his post in the Institute of Genetics until 1965,[1] his influence on Soviet agricultural practice declined by the 1950s. The Soviet Union quietly abandoned Lysenko's agricultural practices in favor of modern agricultural practices after the crop yields he promised failed to materialize. Today much of Lysenko's agricultural experimentation and research is largely viewed as fraudulent.

Originally Posted by Churlant

The point is they still had faith and they're going to be people that are discounted if we're encouraging secularists.

I don't think it follows that encouraging secularism somehow discourages religion. The one isn't the opposite of the other.

Yes well my laptop is crap and half the time it crashes on vid links. The rest of the time it crashes on pdf links... *sigh*

However if this is Tyson's actual argument, he's missing the forest for a single tree. I mean really - Newton didn't go as far as he could because of his religion? Okay... Einstein limited himself because of the same reason. Sagan didn't go as far as he could because he got himself some cancer. A Russian genius managed to solve Poincare's conjecture and he'll probably never contribute again because he's a recluse.

I'll take what Newton gave us over what he didn't (and why) any day of the week. For someone to pull out an Atheist Crystal Ball (TM) and predict we'd have been even further along if Newton had been an atheist too is not only impossible to know, but also ridiculously naive of human psychology.

-JC

Perhaps I've done him a disservice by failing to describe his position very well. You should realise that the name of his lecture was "God of the Gaps" and early on he talked about how it's always been the case that we [humanity] have a habit of putting God at the limits of our knowledge; which is the real gist of his lecture, not the narrow part of it I've focused on for the purpose of this thread. I personally think that is a pretty uncontroversial and accurate assessment by him.

It's a pity you struggle to play vids as I think you'd get a much better understanding of what he's is saying by watching it than by reading my paraphrasing. But let me see if I can't explain it a bit better, using a bit of transcription where necessary:

He first of all explained the difficulty Newton had trying to create a stable model for the solar system, describing it with pairs of bodies all tugging at each other. He said:

Originally Posted by Neil deGrasse Tyson

God is nowhere until you get to the General Scholium.

...

He [Newton] said:

"The six primary planets are revolved about the Sun in circles concentric with the sun and with motions directed towards the same parts and almost on the same plane."

He's got the whole picture now, and he's trying to sort of account for that; but he can't, just simply doing two body calculations--certainly not without a computer or without a new kind of mathematics. He says:

"But is it not to be conceived that mere mechanical forces could give birth to so many regular motions? This most beautiful system, of the Sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the council and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being."

This is Isaac Newton invoking intelligent design... at the limits of his knowledge!

He then talks at length about what followed, from Huygens' work to the brilliant work of P.S. Laplace to apply calculus to Newton's laws of gravity. And how he [Laplace] didn't invoke God because he'd figured it out. Then he got back to Newton with this:

Originally Posted by Neil deGrasse Tyson

And so what concerns me now is, even if you're as brilliant as Newton, you reach a point where you start basking in the majesty of God and then your discovery stops. It just stops! You're kinda no good any more for advancing that frontier. Waiting for somebody else to come behind you--who doesn't have God on the brain--and says "that's a really cool problem, I want to solve it" and they come in and solve it. But look at the time delay... this was a hundred year time delay!

And the math that's in perturbation theory is like crumbs for Newton. He could have come up with that--the guy invented calculus just on a dare practically! When someone asked him "how come planets orbit in ellipses and not some other shape?" and he couldn't answer that, he goes home for two months, comes back and out comes Integral Differential Calculus because he needed that to answer that question. And so this is the kind of mind we were dealing with, with Newton. He could've gone there, but he didn't.

Originally Posted by Antagony

I don't think it follows that encouraging secularism somehow discourages religion. The one isn't the opposite of the other.

It may not be the opposite in theory, but in practice religious individuals - even those who might identify as merely agnostic - will react badly to this kind of direction. (See Dutch's post.) They may not do so fairly, but I don't see a need to antagonize them unnecessarily.

Perhaps I've done him a disservice by failing to describe his position very well. You should realise that the name of his lecture was "God of the Gaps" and early on he talked about how it's always been the case that we [humanity] have a habit of putting God at the limits of our knowledge; which is the real gist of his lecture, not the narrow part of it I've focused on for the purpose of this thread. I personally think that is a pretty uncontroversial and accurate assessment by him.

I just don't see the point in going after Newton because he didn't get as far as he might have. The man's life's work was based, in at least some small part, on his religious faith. To say he'd have gone further if he hadn't invoked 'God of the gaps' is fine - but if he'd been a secularist, he'd have never given us what he did.

-JC

I think that it's mostly fundamentalists who really want to upset the balance of secularism in our society anyways. Many liberal Christians value secularism as much as atheists do, I would think.

Originally Posted by AgentM

I think that it's mostly fundamentalists who really want to upset the balance of secularism in our society anyways. Many liberal Christians value secularism as much as atheists do, I would think.

Precisely. They embrace science too.