Attempts to deny reality or undermine our confidence in our ability to understand reality are common from conservative and fundamentalist religious groups. They are not, however, exclusive to conservatives and fundamentalists. This is because it's not a conservative or fundamentalist problem; instead, it's a religious problem -- a problem that seems to be inherent in religion, which is why we see it with moderate and liberal believers as well.
The latest example of this phenomenon is Keith Ward, who has been reduced to denying that history can be studied or learned about in any scientific fashion. Why? Because it's the only way he can preserve his belief that it is a "fact" that Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead.
A huge number of factual claims are not scientifically testable. Many historical and autobiographical claims, for instance, are not repeatable, not publicly observable now or in future, and are not subsumable under any general law. We know that rational answers to many historical questions depend on general philosophical views, moral views, personal experience and judgment. There are no history laboratories. Much history, like much religion, is evidence-based, but the evidence is not scientifically tractable.
I do not see why Baggini says that religions "smuggle in" agency explanations where they do not belong (for instance, claiming that the cosmos exists because it is created by a God with a purpose). That seems to be a perfectly acceptable factual claim that no known scientific technique can answer. The physical sciences do not generally talk about non-physical and non-law-like facts such as creation by God. That does not mean that such questions are meaningless, or that there are not both rational and silly ways of answering them.
Source: The Guardian (via: Pharyngula
To call this all nonsense would be a gross understatement. First, science does not absolutely depend on repeatability. It's nice when you can get it, but it's not a requirement. This is proof that Keith Ward is too ignorant of basic science to have anything like an informed, intelligent, or education opinion about it. In other words, this error alone completely invalidates the rest of his essay -- the only way he could get anything right in the rest of it is by sheer accident.
Second, there are indeed history "laboratories" -- places where claims and beliefs about history are put to scientific test. It's called archaeology, Keith. It's not quite the hard "science" that physics or chemistry is, but it is done in a scientifically rigorous way and it is used constantly to confirm or disprove what we think we know about the past.
There's also a little field called "forensic science" -- I wonder if Keith Ward has ever heard of it? Around the world forensic science is used to solve crimes. In every single case, those crimes happened in the past. In every single case, science is used to determine what happened in the past -- who did what, where, and when.
It's imperfect, like any science, but if Keith Ward actually believed his rhetoric about there being no science of history then he'd have to insist that everyone imprisoned on the basic of forensic results be immediately freed. I'd bet money that he won't do it, which makes him a hypocrite.
But not all facts are scientific facts - the claim that I was in Oxford last night, unseen by anyone, will occur in no scientific paper, but it is a hard fact. So it is with the miracles of Jesus, with the creation of the cosmos and with its end.
The interesting question is not whether religion is compatible with science, but whether there are important factual questions - and some important non-factual questions, too, such as moral ones - with which the physical sciences do not usually deal. The answer seems pretty obvious, without trying to manufacture sharp and artificial distinctions between "hows" and "whys".
The idea that Keith Ward was in Oxford last night or any night is only a "fact" if it is indeed true that he was in Oxford. Otherwise it's just a claim or an idea. So how do we decide if it qualifies as a fact? There are types of evidence that we could accept as justifying that conclusion -- and producing evidence is how science proceeds. Given how unremarkable the claim is, though, it's something that we might be willing to accept as fact without evidence.
But if Keith Ward were accused of rape or murder in some other location, you know that the police would never just take his word for it that he was in Oxford so couldn't possibly be the perpetrator. He knows this too. He knows that he'd have to produce some sort of evidence to remove the suspicion or hope that the police are able to acquire strong evidence that points them in another direction.
In other words, Keith Ward would rely upon scientific investigation to clear his name of a heinous crime and he'd surely object if anyone accepted it as "fact" that he committed that crime merely because someone asserted it as "fact." So I think we can conclude that Keith Ward doesn't really believe anything he wrote and is a hypocrite -- he only uses such arguments when they seem to be a convenient way to justify believing something that he'd never accept in any other context.
It's exactly what conservatives and fundamentalists do when denying something like evolution. Even the basic arguments are much the same -- and the existence of sciences which do provide facts about the past, like forensic science, also serve as a rebuttal to the evolution deniers. So once again, it's not conservative religion or fundamentalist religion that's the problem, it's religion itself because it's religion that's demanding people believe things based on faith and without a shred of evidence as support. It's religion which is demanding that people treat faith as knowledge and dismiss fact-based arguments when they are inconvenient.
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