Science and Religion

[islamkingdom]

“I do not think that it is necessarily the case that science and religion are natural opposites. In fact, I think that there is a very close connection between the two. Further, I think that science without religion is lame and, conversely, that religion without science is blind. Both are important and should work hand-in-hand. It seems to me that whoever doesn’t wonder about the truth in religion and in science, might as well be dead.”

Einstein
source: islamkingdom

 

[Al Sultan]

But he died as an ATHIEST..

 

[kritikvernunft]

“I do not think that it is necessarily the case that science and religion are natural opposites.

We first have to agree on a definition for science and one for religion. Using the following definitions:

science: the practice of testing in the real world (=experimentally testing) in order to find counterexamples for a particular theorem ("if A then B").
religion: a list of forbidden behaviours ("a morality") and possibly an explanation of what the source for this list may be.

The question was solved long ago by Immanual Kant in Kritik der practischen Vernunft. A valid list of forbidden behaviours must be categorical, i.e. may never explain why these behaviours are forbidden (They must not be phrased under the form "if A then B"). Hence, by its very design the religious list of forbidden behaviours does not allow for experimental testing, since there is simply nothing (of the form "if A then B") to test.

Note: You can find a lengthy explanation for why morality must consist of categorical imperatives, and why hypothetical imperatives ("If A then B") are not allowed, in Kritik der practischen Vernunft. To cut a long story short, hypothetical imperatives will always rest on a theory of everything, to which Kurt Gödel has later on decisively demonstrated in his Incompleteness theorems, that we can impossibly have access.

 

[Scimitar]

Your definition for religion is somewhat, half baked.

Scimi

 

[kritikvernunft]

Your definition for religion is somewhat, half baked.

A definition does not need to be correct. It must, however, always be predicatable. You have usefully defined D, if it is possible to construct a predicate function isD(x) that will manage to return true or false for any x that you throw at it.

For religion, the predicate function isReligion(x) must be able to answer true or false, for any x that you throw at it.

In that sense, it obviously ok to improve an existing, predicatable definition, as long as the improved version remains predicatable. I started the definition process of religion by claiming that religion is a law of metaphysical origin. So, generally, there are two requirements for a set of statements to constitute a religion:

1. It must forbid particular behaviour.
2. The set of such interdicts may not be of human origin

It is indeed strange that the definition of definition, aka, the metadefinition introduces the requirement for a function. The definition of function, is simply a mapping between elements:

a--->r
b--->t
z--->n
r---->k

With only one limitation, a function is not allowed to map an element on the left to more than one element on the right. This definition gives the impression of being predicatable. So, at first glance, it may look possible to define a function isFunction(f) that will return for any function f whether it is truly a function or not. However, here we can simply make use of the spectacular result booked by Alan Turing, the proof for the halting problem, which says that it is impossible to construct a program (or function) which would always be able to determine if another candidate program (or function) will halt. Since we cannot determine if a candidate function will even just halt, it is a fortiori impossible to determine whether such candidate function will always return the same output for a particular input, since this program cannot determine if such function would even finish computing its output.

In that sense, the correctness of a definition is way less important that its predicatability.

 

[Scimitar]

Bruce Lee quotes are appropriate here. Never concentrate on the finger or you lose all that heavenly glory.

Islam is more than a paragraph or two hastily defined in a rush and mistakenly presented under the banner of "religion" when it is a more complete system and way of life.

Scimi

 

[kritikvernunft]

Bruce Lee quotes are appropriate here. Never concentrate on the finger or you lose all that heavenly glory. Islam is more than a paragraph or two hastily defined in a rush and mistakenly presented under the banner of "religion" when it is a more complete system and way of life.

At the core of Islam you have a scriptural Quranic law of metaphysical origin. The Quran and its resulting law is attributed to the One God, Allah, the create of the universe. This law forbids a set of behaviours, deemed impermissible.

It is not clear to me why there would be a requirement to use the terms "complete system" and "way of life" in a predicatable definition. These terms only make the definition less predicatable, because they raise the questions "What exactly is a complete system?" and "What exactly is a way of life?".

The shorter definition is already useful enough to me, because it clearly cuts short any attempt at introducing another source of law. That is where true monotheism shines. There cannot be another lawmaker, because the only legitimate one, is the One God. I do not need more than that to roll out very useful applications.