I don't have a pat answer to that question, but here are some of the latest dispatches:
Sam writes: I merely asked you to imagine what it would be like if our discourse about ethics and spirituality were as uncontaminated by cultural prejudice as the discourse of science already is.
It's not likely that we can apply the principles of science to ethics, of people running around trying to disprove each others theories about whether it is right or wrong to kill someone in this or that set of circumstances, for instance. If there were a compelling science to such things, it might have been found. Even the social sciences, in which we might try to understand outcomes and draw moral instruction from them are fraught with difficulties (e.g. providing needles to drug users reduces AIDS, but ... well, everyone knows the hard cases).
The question is whether the atheist viewpoint might have an instructional presence at the table in discussing ethical questions, in adding something to the encounter with the world.
Sam: The point that I was trying to make is that science is not nearly as beleaguered by contingency as religion is.
The acknowledgment that scientific theories can be un-made and re-made in an instant, with improved data or insight seems to lend an uncertainty, a contingency, all its own, one that doesn't seem suitable to the kinds of moral and ethical questions that people find answered within their religious traditions (or cultural traditions).
What's worse is that scientific theory is inaccessible to many, if not most, in ways that religious belief is not. How many people can adequately explain about Schrödinger's Cat, eh? How many know off hand what the specific gravity of water is or why the sky appears blue?
sullylink
