NOMA is a Myth?

A FaceBook friend just shared a post called The Myth of Separate Magisteria that argues that Steven Jay Gould's premise of Non-Overlapping Magisteria is flawed. He argues,

"One might as well say that conflict arises between men and women only when they stray onto each other’s territories and stir up trouble. Science produces discoveries that challenge long-held beliefs (not only religious ones) based on revelation rather than evidence, and the religious must decide whether to battle or accommodate secular knowledge if it contradicts their teachings.

I usually claim NOMA when pressed on whether Science can disprove God. The realms of revelation vs. evidence can be kept separate as long as religion keeps stepping back as verifiable research claims ever more territory. Scientific understanding will keep stepping on religions skirts until the faithful stick to claims that can only be held on faith, and stop claiming "truth" about things for which there is contradictory evidence. God is a fuzzy and non-falsifiable idea. Science will never disprove God. But it has disproved most of what the Bible claims about God's involvement in nature, the Earth, and the Universe. So these ways of looking at the universe do overlap, until such time as the weaker one bows out of the territory. As with the flat Earth, the Sin theory of gravity, the God's Pillars principle of Earthquakes, God's Wrath principle of extreme weather, the Geocentric universe, the Young Earth, and so on.

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Lessons Learned?

What can be drawn from this recent election that speaks to America? To listen to the bombast, this election is all about money. Who has it, where it comes from, what it’s to be spent on, when to cut it off. An angry electorate looking at massive job loss and all that that implies tossed out the previous majority in Congress over money. This is not difficult to understand. People are frightened that they will no longer be able to pay their bills, keep their homes, send their children to college. Basic stuff. Two years into the current regime and foreclosures are still high, unemployment still high, fear level still high, and the only bright spot concerns people who are seemingly so far removed from such worries as to be on another plain of existence. The stock market has been steadily recovering over the last two years. Which means the economy is growing. Slowly. Economic forecasters talking on the radio go on and on about the speed of the recovery and what it means for jobs. Out of the other end of the media machine, concern over illegal immigrants and outsourcing are two halves of the same worry. Jobs are going overseas, and those that are left are being filled by people who don’t even belong here. The government has done nothing about either—except in Arizona, where a law just short of a kind of fascism has been passed, and everyone else has been ganging up on that state, telling them how awful they are. And of course seemingly offering nothing in place of a law that, for it’s monumental flaws, still is something. [More . . . ]

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Paraprosdokians, anyone?

I hadn't heard of the term "paraprosdokians" until I visited englishforums.com. The definition: "a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to re-frame or re-interpret the first part." Englishforums.com offers 30 paraprosdokians, including these:

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong. Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America ? You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

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Is religion honest?

Most religious adherents would be aghast if one suggested that they, or their religion, were fundamentally and consistently dishonest. However I believe that is indeed the case. I read a comment on a recent blog post by Ed Brayton (honesty vs intellectually honest). Ed's post argued about the distinction between honesty and intellectual honesty, and noted that intellectual honesty must recognize not only the arguments in support of a position, but also any evidence or arguments against that position. One of the commenters (Sastra) then made the following case that faith was fundamentally intellectually dishonest:

[...] An intellectually dishonest person blurs the distinction [between being intellectually honest, and being emotionally honest], and seems to confuse fact claims with meaning or value claims. To a person who places emphasis on emotional honesty, strength of conviction is evidence. An attack on an idea, then, is an attack on the person who holds it. The idea is true because it's emotionally fulfilling: intentions and sincerity matter the most. Therefore, you don't question, search, or respect dissent. A person who is trying to change your mind, is trying to change you. For example, I consider religious faith [...] to be intellectually dishonest. It is, however, sincerely emotionally honest. [...] "Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of what is not seen." There's a huge emotional component to it, so that one chooses to keep faith in X, the way one might remain loyal to a friend. You defend him with ingenuity and love, finding reasons to explain or excuse evidence against him. He cannot fail: you, however, can fail him, by allowing yourself to be lead into doubt. Being able to spin any result into support then is a sign of good will, loyalty, reliability, and the ability to stand fast. The focus isn't on establishing what's true, but on establishing that you can be "true." This emotional honesty may or may not be rewarded: the real point, I think, is to value it for its own sake, as a fulfillment of a perceived duty.
This is exactly the case with religion, and religious adherents. Their faith in their god is entirely emotional, and no amount of material evidence will alter their belief. They may be entirely honest in their belief, and may be entirely honest in their objection to evidence (cf Karl, Rabel, Walter, et al) but in doing so are being intellectually dishonest, because they refuse to recognize valid and entirely relevant evidence - they conflate with great consistency and verve fact claims with value claims, and deny any difference between them stating it's all 'interpretation'. No, it isn't all interpretation. It's dishonesty.

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