There was recently a debate at my school as to whether science and religion are mutually exclusive; can a scientist believe in God? I have heard of similar debates about the age of the universe: millions of years old, like scientists 'know', or about 5000 years old, like Christians 'know'. It always surprises me to hear a scientist infer that people of faith are buffoons for believing this kind of thing. The argument usually going something like, "I can't believe people still believe that! Science has already proven that!" This is, of course, circular logic. It's similar to saying, "science is correct because science says so", or "if science is correct, then science is correct." These are scientists! They are supposed to have a basic understanding of mathematics. Apparently they don't teach logic in science class.
The point is that science is no more correct than religion is. If I assume that religion is true, then I can prove that the universe is 5000 years old. In any system of thought, one must start with a set of things that are assumed to be true, called axioms. Most of science is based on an axiom of induction, which says that if you do something many times and get the same result, you know that the same result will all ways happen. For example, if every day of your life, you get out of bed and the floor supports your weight, you know that this morning it will. This is usually a good assumption, but can run into trouble sometimes. Imagine you roll a die 109 times and every time it comes up 6, 4 or 2. Does this mean that the die can only roll even numbers? Probably not. It's a question of how many times you do it, and there's probability axioms about that, but I won't get into it.
The crux of the issue is really that you can't ever know whether your axioms are correct. You can't even know whether your axioms are consistent with each other (this was first proved by Kurt Godel [pronounced like good-el] in 1931). It all comes down to what you believe is true. So if you're religious, and the Bible seems more correct than the axioms of science, then it's perfectly logical for you to conclude that the universe is 5000 years old.
For myself, I know that I exist. I know that any proposition is either true or false but not both. I think that other people exist, but I know that I can't prove it.
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4 comments:
"I know that any proposition is either true or false but not both."
Except Schrodinger's Cat haha
I'll believe in you if you believe in me?
It's not that I don't believe in you, it's that I know that I can't prove you exist.
Also, I believe Heir Schrodinger formulated that thought experiment as a warning about how silly quantum mechanics can be if you're not careful. Usually, you'd say "Schrodinger's Cat is dead" is an unknowable proposition; it is never both true and false.
If you deny this fundamental axiom of logic, it is impossible to prove anything. For example, proving that quantum mechanics is correct would not deny that it could also be false. For this reason, and others (quantum also gets a little sketchy around the axiom of induction by introducing probabilities into all events), many brilliant minds simply refuse to believe that it is correct. Example: Einstein, Godel.
Cogito, ergo sum.
Good ol' Decartes
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