MrWonderful wrote:
Let's Examine Claims of Atheists
The Fallacy of Science vs. Religion
The atheists' frequent claim that science and religion are mutually exclusive is demonstrably false. If atheists were as "rational" and "intelligent" as they are always claiming, they would not resort to mendacity. Science pursues truth.
The list of scientists as men and women faith is long and growing.
List of Christians in science and technology - Wikipedia
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality, it is a profound source of spirituality. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
” - Demon Haunted World, page 29, by Carl Sagan
“I believe in God more because of science than in spite of it.” – William Phillips, Nobel Laureate in Physics
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If you look at the early scientists, they believed in a deity. Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler. But their work was, for the lack of a better term, mechanistic.
They were all trying to figure out how the Solar System worked, and Aristotle just didn't cut the mustard once you had a telescope.
This is not, at all, about what scientists believe in their private lives. It's about the work. Science is always about the work.
The idea of Truth is part of the Platonic tradition of philosophy. Modern philosophers of science don't use the traditional language of philosophy. My fave is Ronald N Giere.
I find it funny that you take turns attacking Carl Sagan, and then use him as a source. Pick one.
Here is some actual philosophy:
" So pragmatists see the Platonic tradition as having outlived its usefulness. This does not mean that they have a new, non-Platonic set of answers to Platonic questions to offer, but rather that they do not think we should ask those questions any more. When they suggest that we not ask questions about the nature of Truth and Goodness, they do not invoke a theory about the nature of reality or knowledge or man which says that “there is no such thing” as Truth or Goodness. Nor do they have a “relativistic” or “subjectivist” theory of Truth or Goodness. They would simply like to change the subject. They are in a position analogous to that of secularists who urge that research concerning the Nature, or the Will, of God does not get us anywhere. Such secularists are not saying that God does not exist, exactly; they feel unclear about what it would mean to affirm His existence, and thus about the point of denying it. Nor do they have some special, funny, heretical view about God. They just doubt that the vocabulary of theology is one we ought to be using."
Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subj ... /rorty.htm