Why I oppose NOMA (Against Non-Overlapping Magisteria Book 1)

Gould an interesting and unintentional collaboration an the part of the first party relies on each word of the statement. SJG did not state that they never overlap, but that they should strive not to, and that they can thereby coexist harmoniously. Dawkins and others have argued basically that there are overlapping areas in which science is clearly correct and religion clearly wrong, and the entire idea is untenable.

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I would argue that the idea of NOMA is valid for areas in which the two camps fairly clearly do not overlap "what is the meaning of life? I would also argue that the most interesting bits occur in what SJG delightfully called the "interdigitations" of the two magisteria.

When science and religion begin to encroach upon each other, it is usually a fringe group e. American Creationists who have created a problem where there should be none. The idea of NOMA is philosophic, not scientific. It is acceptable as a model for allowing science and religion to function in the same world. Given that the human mind seems predisposed to believe in religion IMO , the conflict will exist for a long time, and a rational method of reconciliation is appropriate.

I do not believe it sacrifices a scientist's honesty to admit that there are certain questions we cannot ask, much less answer. The fun part is determining which questions those are. The idea of NOMA is seductive and dangerous. We are told that there are areas that science cannot reach, cannot even try to reach. This is prima facie ridiculous.

Non-Overlapping Magisteria - RationalWiki

Science can explore any area of inquiry, and, if we include mathematics, can explore the probability of various religious ideas being true. A fundamental thought-error made by many is that, since God cannot be disproved, His existence is equally likely as his absence. I also cannot prove that I will not spontaneously combust 10 seconds after leaving the keyboard--however, based on scientific and mathematical reasoning, it is extremely unlikely. It has often been said that one of the byproduct ideas of QM is that anything that can happen, well, can happen monkeys, or preferably goats, pounding keyboards to produce the works of Shakespeare.

That is not to say it will happen, only that it can be assigned a mathematical probability that is not equal to zero. NOMA is useless because the same is true of God The way I see it, NOMA is the proverbial bone one has to throw once in a while, or some scientist invented the term to confuse the angry mob in front of him To me, the whole principle of NOMA is flawed by one simple thing - we cannot predict the future. Suppose in 50 years time, some scientist invented a machine that could definitively give an unequivocal answer to the question 'do souls exist?

I would say that's a ridiculous suggestion. Yes, whilst we genuinely don't know, everyone has the right to believe what they want and, indeed, has the right to reject evidence in favor of 'faith' in the areas where we DO know the answer, as long as they accept that this cannot, in any way, be called 'science' , but suggesting that there are areas that science shouldn't even be allowed to investigate seems quite ludicrous to me. If the 'religious' magesteria is more or less defined as 'anything that's not science, but only as long as it remains not science', there seems to be little point in adopting any kind of NOMA concept at all, as, in today's secular world, it basically fails to change anything whatsoever.

An interesting, to me, aspect of this "philosophical" idea is that although it pretends to give science and religion equal weights and, let's say, equal but different domains, it is science that determines where the line of non-overlap occurs.

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Religion is left, as mentioned above, to the gaps. At any given point in time, science may have no way of inteliigently and usefully exploring a given area of study; and thus, scientists will "allow" that that topic falls under religion's "magisteria". But as soon as a way to investigate it is developed, religion loses its prerogative.

So as much as it sounds like SJG is "giving" religion a valuable and meaningful place in understanding our universe, all his phrase really means is that clerics can feel free to play in the sandbox of whatever remains that science cannot work on yet. The net process over time is of religion to continually "lose territory". Religionists must therefore, in the end, feel like the indigenous population of what is now the United States - constantly being removed from their lands and confined to smaller and more remote territories.

And isn't it wonderful?

Having read the previous posts, the main argument against NOMA seems to be that it is a God of the gaps type of agreement — it allows religion space to do things in areas where science has not yet entered. While I fully accept the above objection, I also have an objection to the way NOMA is actually used by religious people. It seems to be used as a philosophical hiding place for those who are being pursued by logical agreements.

Such people are quite happy to initially use logical arguments to back up their cases - until the going starts to get too hot or the questions start to hit too close to home. This, to me, looks like wanting to have your cake and eat it. Use logic to support your case if it persuades people but then run to NOMA when thing get difficult. Surely those who support religion and NOMA should begin from the outset by saying there is no logical basis for their case and not try to pretend there is one? Doing otherwise is deceit.

I agree that religion is illogical. It can, however, fill the "illogical" gaps in the human experience, for instance, questions of meaning. That does not make it inherently superior to other philosophies, however, it is very popular, and therefore relevant. What NOMA allows is a space for a particular unscientific philosophical belief in a scientific world. Well, if it went no further than that I wouldn't object to it.

If I may re-word your statement to something like, "It gives people who simply have to believe in something - however strange - an excuse to do so. But that wasn't my objection. At the risk of repeating myself myself, NOMA believers want it both ways. Logic until they get stuck - and then hide behind NOMA. And I don't think that's honest. It semms quite resnoble to me to disacosciate science and religion. I fully acknowlege that I wouldn't accept any "evidence" which suggested that God didn't exist on the basid that it must be wrong. Basicly I agreewit NOMA - if Religious speakers don't talk ever, in any way whatsoever about the realm of science, then I for one will be glad to agree not to discuss the mumbo-jumbo of religion.

The moment they bring a deity into the province of science however they cross the barrier. Otherwise let the children play in their corner. Susan Jayne Garlick talk Should any religious belief be considered sacrosanct? Or only religious beliefs held by people who support NOMA? For example, many people hold that a worldwide flood occurred a few thousand years ago - and they hold this belief for religious reasons.

Would the concept of NOMA protect this idea from rational criticism, and if not, why not? I would prefer drawing the line at things where evidence is considered meaningful. This means religion is radically overstepping its bounds. From the debate that has taken place in recent days, I understand that many of our editors here do not consider NOMA as a valid framework for viewing the relationship between science and religion.

Now, the way I see things, NOMA is essentially an attempt to compromise - an attempt to reconciliate the different worldviews that are involved here in a way that allows both to "save face", so to speak, and allow both sides to engage in a meaningful dialogue with each other instead of just talking past each ohter. So the question inevitably arises: If NOMA is not the answer here, then what is? One of the reasons I find some religious believers oppose evolution is because they don't have a clue what it is.

Evolution equates to them "we come from monkeys", which faulty as it is, is all they know.

The more enlightened christians and jews are able to reconcile evolution with Genesis is because they already know the entire Genesis order of creation is wrong Sun made before plants, etc , they already know about the contradicting 2 creation accounts, they know that books like Joshua and Esther are complete historical fabrications, and so on.

Christianity in the last few centuries created the doctrine of "inspiration" to accomodate errors in the Bible. As for muslims, problems have never really occured with science mainly because Mohammed was a very pro-science person. He told his followers to always seek knowledge, even if it is unto China.

The Quran and hadith literature make no statements about cosmology, or matters we would not suited to be discovered by methodological naturalism. And besides Nasir Al Din Al Tusi came up with evolution centuries before Darwin, he was one of the highest religious clerics of the time. I'm not sure what you mean by a "blatant characterization" or by "singular categories," but if you are going to use the word "religion" in a serious way, I don't think that you can just shrug off the question of what religion is and what its proper business is, especially not if, like Gould, you want to answer both religious types who think that they have authority to give directives to science and defenders of science who think that religion is just a corruption of human reason that needs to shut up and go away.

Gould attributes to religion and science respectively a pair of tasks or essential concerns calculated to keep the two out of each other's business. I don't think that his attempt is successful, but you seem to think that such a task is not even worth attempting.

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That is not my impression of history, much less of what is going on in Islam these days. I don't think that Galileo would concur with your judgment about the acceptance of scientific findings by the Catholic church. Further, professing acceptance of scientific findings is one thing, while actual acceptance of them is another, as can be seen in the record of Orthodox Judaism toward biblical archaeology and criticism.

Remember that "accepting what the scientific worldview reveals" means not just accepting general conclusions about cosmology, biology, etc. To say that Islam not been receptive to attempts to extend this kind of scientific investigation to the Qu'ran would be an understatement. My first thought on reading this was that Darwin never pretended to originate the idea of evolution, but only—simultaneously with Alfred Russel Wallace—the theory of natural selection, which explained how evolution occurs.

Still, the Wikipedia article on Tusi provides quotations that confirm that he had the idea of speciation through the differential survival value of traits years before Darwin and Wallace. I think it is well known that, in the high middle ages, Muslims were the custodians of all higher learning in the West, while Christians and Jews were either learning from them or remaining in ignorance of science and philosophy.

But that state of affairs did not persist into the modern age, and things are on a very different footing now. Thanks for the link, Shilton.

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There is some very interesting reading there, even for someone like me who cannot read the Hebrew passages. I can use Google Translate, though, if I need to. Each side invokes an authority, and each side claims truth. The conflict, it seems to me, is really between claims to two different sources of authority: The difference in principle, in Gould's terms, is that the religious side in these cases is trying to operate outside of the sphere in which such sources actually have authority.

It recognizes no epistemological difference in principle between a question about the possible length of a human pregnancy and, say, a question of religious observance: From the point of view of anyone outside of the particular religious tradition in question, this is a positively insane way of answering questions of natural fact. We can sympathize with people who answered all questions this way a thousand years ago, but it is more difficult to sympathize with those who do it today, like the Muslim clerics cited in the article.

Science and religion can work together to create wonders for all that is involved. I think as elegant as all the arguments made here are, they miss the point. Maybe you can call it a category mistake. Misapplying a time worn psychological dynamic which I will call for brevity: