Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
difference between weak agnosticism and strong atheism is that weak agnosticism
assumes
that the supernatural design does not exist because there is no evidence for
it, but does not rule it out as a logical possibility, while strong atheism
asserts
that
the supernatural does not exist and does rule it out as a logical possibility. This is a
debate where definitions are important. I shall emphasise the necessity of defining
terms exactly in a later section.
Other correspondence suggests that Darwin was sometimes inclined to the deist
view that an intelligent agent had created the Universe and the laws by which it
operates, but thereafter had no interaction with it. This deist view is equivalent in
practical terms to being a naturalist because it allows science to function in a natural-
istic framework, as well as ruling out miracles and praying for divine intervention.
For this reason, deism is the only type of religious belief that is not in conflict
with the naturalist approach upon which science depends. Most of the other lead-
ing scientists up to about the middle of the twentieth century were supernaturalists
however.
What can we deduce from these historical facts? Firstly, it is obvious that believ-
ing in the supernatural does not prevent you becoming a leading scientist. We can
also deduce that such people separate the way they think about science from the way
they think about religion. When doing science they use Occam's razor, but when
doing religion they abandon Occam's razor, because postulating invisible agents
clearly requires more assumptions than not postulating them. These assumptions
include the origins, properties, and interests of such agents. These assumptions vary
greatly among the different religions - in the monotheistic religions God is good,
omniscient and omnipotent (hence the capital G), but this is not the case for some of
the gods in many polytheistic religions. So the worst that supernaturalist scientists
can be accused of is inconsistency.
What about the evidence that, according to polls and surveys, most leading sci-
entists today have no religious beliefs? One can only speculate about the reasons for
this. My suggestion is that it is because, at the end of the day, religious explanations
are not really explanations - they may be emotionally appealing but they are intel-
lectually unsatisfying
,
because they posit even greater mysteries that the ones you
are trying to explain. As the philosopher Anthony Grayling so eloquently puts it “To
answer the question of how the universe came into existence by saying “God created
it” is not in fact to answer the question, but to explain one mystery by appealing to
an even greater mystery - exactly like saying that the universe rests on the back of
a turtle, and then ignoring the question of what the turtle rests on”.
One interesting problem that some naturalist scientists and philosophers of today
are tackling is how to explain the universal persistence of supernatural beliefs -
why do they occur, what accounts for their particular features, what purposes do
they serve? In recent years, anthropologists studying the huge variety of supernatural
beliefs found around the world, and psychologists seeking evolutionary explanations
for religious beliefs, have proposed a number of hypotheses (Fig. 2.7).
There are two general types of explanation offered, but they are not mutually
exclusive - elements of both may be correct. The first type assumes that supernat-
ural beliefs have direct survival value for humans and thus are adaptive features.
