Ch. 4 - The Roots of Religion

Saint Gasoline · Intern Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 151 Gender:

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No, because test in physics are presumably repeatable, and the results of the tests are applicable retrospectively because you assume that the present conditions are not significantly different from past conditions. And given the mechanistic assumptions of physics, those assumptions are warranted. History, on the other hand, has a cumulative and temporal element that frustrates that assumption.

Historical tests are indeed repeatable in a scientifically relevant sense. They are not "repeatable" in the sense in which you use the term, but it is arguable that even tests in physics are not repeatable in your sense, either. (For instance, rolling a ball down a plane as Galileo experimented, and then doing it again, is not performing the same experiment--there will be slight changes in the variables, be it wind resistance, a different position of the ball, a different path down the slope, etc. But your argument that the present conditions are not significantly different from the past conditions stems on the rather arbitrary word "significantly"--what constitutes a significant difference? What about statistical sciences like quantum physics where completely different effects can occur from situations without a significant difference?)

That digression aside, historical tests are indeed repeatable. Repeatability is only applicable in regards to evidence. So long as the evidence that established the occurrence of the holocaust in 1950 is still available to establish the occurrence in 2006, then this hypothesis is indeed testable and repeatable. You can test it by searching for the relevant artifacts and evidence, and you can repeat it by finding the same evidence all over again. I think your use of "repeatability" is based upon a more "experiment-oriented" view of science that doesn't really reflect the true nature of science. For instance, most of the "scientific" evidence for evolution is not from "repeatable experiments" in your sense of the term, but from ancient artifacts and other observations that accord with the theory. We can't show the evolutionary progression that went about in the Cambrian in your sense of "repeatable" (because the conditions are different today), but this doesn't mean that the evidence in favor of a particular Cambrian progression is somehow non-scientific.

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I think that example is more complicated than you may have supposed. That the Mayans sacrificed humans we can verify more or less by noting architectural features and their proximity to large amounts of human remains that have the marks of ritual sacrifice. That those victims were virgins would be a lot harder to substantiate.

Of course it is hard to substantiate various claims. It is equally hard to verify theories about the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and so on. The fact that it is hard to substantiate doesn't somehow differentiate this research from scientific research, anymore than your (in my opinion) flawed account of repeatability differentiates it.

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To put it into perspective, suppose there were a theory which was settled thoroughly in the realm of the possible, but which could not be verified, to the end that traditional family households were intrinsically likely to psychologically damage children. What degree of verification would you demand before advocating that politicians start using that theory as the basis for crafting national policy? I'd say that, without very substantial verification, any policy crafted from a theory that struck that closely to the heart of how people lived was too much of a gamble to take so lightly.

I agree, of course, although I'm not sure what aspects of policy you think Dennett is addressing. (Bear with me here, I'm only at around Chapter 6, I just got the book the other day.) Dennet's theory isn't adequate enough to form any policy on the matter, and it is far from cohering in a very high degree to the truth. My original point was only that it is impossible to know that we have truly reached the truth--all we can expect is a very reliable conforming of the expected outcomes of a theory to the actual facts. In your example, we would need to have a very good coherence between the theory's predictions and our observations to make a policy out of it. But to demand absolute certainty is to demand the impossible.

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When we talk about the origin of religion, we're talking about a precedent that cannot be replicated in modern times, which no one alive witnessed, and of which there is no record. It can only be inferred from evidence whose connection to the actual events is conjectural.

I wouldn't be so quick to write off any possibility of finding evidence of religion's origins. It is best to continue inquiry and fail rather than to silence inquiry where we may have been able to succeed, I'm sure you'll agree. Do you think anyone in the 1800's would believe we would one day be producing adequate accounts of the birth of the universe itself based upon evidence? Or have the ability to know how stars and planets form? People would have thought, like you think in regards to religion, that we could only establish such facts through conjecture. But I'm not so sure I agree with you. I think it is indeed possible to establish and evidence-based account of religion's origins, and I remain hopeful that this is possible.


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