What does it mean that a belief is scientifically compatible?

Question

In the following thread ...

Does culture bias weaken the argument that modern science and a religious world view are compatible?

... the questioner presents the following discussion between an atheist and a theist, and afterwards proceeds to scrutinize the argument made by the theist.

ATH: "Modern science and reason are incompatible with a religious world view."

TH: "That's not true, many scientists, mathematicians and philosophers are also people of faith."

But, what does it even mean for a world view to be compatible with "modern science and reason"? It does not make much sense to me that we immediately rush to criticize the argument made by the theist, if we cannot first give a clear and concise definition of what scientific compatibility is all about, why it matters, and how we may go about proving its existence or inexistance in any particular context.

That is my question. You don't have to read the below text, that's just me thinking out loud.

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If we define scientific compatibility as any world view for which there is no empirical (material) evidence, well, then in that case, a theist world view is by definition incompatible with modern science, and thus invoking the notion of scientific compatibility in a discussion with a theist seems like a pointless catch-22. How is the theist suppose to argue for the scientific compatibility of their belief when the word scientific compatibility has been defined in such a way to ensure their belief is incompatible?

And further, if we proceed with this definition, why should the theist even care about scientific compatibility? By the very nature of them being a theist, they do not value empirical evidence above all else, and therefore have no reason to care much for this particular notion of scientific compatibility.

We could also define scientific compatibility as any world view which does not directly contradict a prevailing scientific theory. Well, in that case, the definition is trivial and useless, as any belief can be made scientifically compatible by simply adding an addendum to explain why modern science reached a particular conclusion. By definition, such a belief would be compatible with that particular scientific conclusion. For example, take the beliefs "God created the world 5000 years ago" and "the Universe as we observe it (!) began with the Big Bang some billions of years ago". These could both be made compatible by merely adding to the first belief the addendum "...and God made it seem like the Universe began with the Big Bang some billions of years ago".

Or we could define scientific compatibility to be person-specific, in the sense that a person's beliefs are compatible with their scientific knowledge if this person can have these beliefs and still respect and contribute to that scientific knowledge. Well, in that case, the argument made by the theist in the discussion at the start of this posts seems to be perfectly valid, as indeed a scientist of faith is by definition a person who contributes to science despite having a faith, and therefore their faith is scientifically compatible using the current definition, and so pointing out that many scientists are also believers seems to be a perfectly valid why to prove that faith can be compatible with science.

Anyways, that's just my thoughts. What's the definition that other people typically use?

Answer 1

I have found two definitions used in my experiences.

The first is "A scientifically compatible belief is one whose statements about the empirical world can be tested via the scientific method, and have yet to be falsified." I find this kind of definition is commonly used for dealing with beliefs which claim to be able to affect "the real world" (scare quotes included). As an example, there's a longstanding debate as to whether Chi (氣), a Chinese concept of energy, is real or not. Those who practice arts centered around it claim that it is real and can affect the world. The scientific community has steadily challenged empirical claims made by masters of these arts, and those (specific) claims have been falsified.¹ At the present, I find most non-practicioners of those arts consider chi to be "not scientifically compatible" because it's believers keep making empirical claims which get falsified by science.

That definition tends to be more benign. It could be paraphrased as "as long as you don't claim things that science proves false, you're compatible with science." There is another definition I often run into which is more strict, and more metaphysical. The definition above relies purely on the strongest part of science: it's rigorous methodology. The second definition I run into a lot digs at the metaphysics of science: "A belief is scientifically compatible if all of its claims could be arrived at via a series of tests using the scientific method." This definition is stricter because it requires the belief to make no claims to truth which do not fit science's model of how we can view reality. It comes from an assumption that all meaningful knowledge can be acquired via the scientific method, so any knowledge which cannot be acquired in this way must be meaningless. Not everyone holds this opinion, but I find many do.

This stronger definition would cause one to argue that the belief at the heart of Christianity is not compatible with science because many Christian groups believe that the Bible is the True word of God, and thus any statement made in the Bible is true. However, the Bible makes many claims which could never be tested via the scientific method. In particular, it contains one-time events such as the resurrection and the rapture which, being one-time events, are naturally untestable via a methodology which depends upon repetition and replication. This would cause someone who accepts the second definition to reject Christianity as "not scientifically compatible."

Myself, I find that when I get into debates, the former definition is more popular, but it depends on the venue. The more fire-and-forget environments like social media are weighted more towards the second definition because it is incredibly good at dismissing contrary opinions, but more serious debates tend to favor the more conservative former definition. At least that is my (unscientific) experience.

¹ This often leads to fascinating debates as to what qualifies as falsification, and how seriously any given study should be treated, but I have not yet found any study on chi with positive results which has been generally accepted by the larger scientific community.

Answer 2

In this context, I believe this is a reference to the non-overlapping magisteria theory, which claims that science and religion are separate "magisteria," and cannot contradict each other because they are talking about different things. Similarly, you might reasonably expect that physics and economics are unlikely to contradict each other.

This view is criticized by Dawkins (and others) with regard to contemporary religions. It works well for deism and other non-interventionist theistic beliefs. As soon as you introduce things like intercessory prayer and miracles, however, the religion is making predictions which are clearly within the domain of empirical science. Prayer, for example, has been repeatedly studied but does not seem to work very well (if at all).

Weaving this all together, we could call any belief which is not apparently subject to empirical testing (such as the Holy Spirit) "compatible with science." This understands "compatible" to mean "able to coexist with science" rather than "scientific in its own right." The latter is a much stronger criterion, which requires that we actually test the belief and subject it to scientific study.

Definitions, of course, are ultimately just labels. Personally, I'm of the opinion that "able to coexist with science" is a more useful label for religious beliefs than "scientific in its own right." However, there is certainly room for both labels in the world. You just need to ensure that you are clear about which label you choose to use in any given situation.

Answer 3

For the atheist, religions lack of scientific compatibility, is an argument against the religion. For the theist, scientific compatibility matters, because it disables the first argument.

You could invent a religion that says all matter has a soul, i.e. stones, metal bars, bricks, etc. (The Hare-Krishna movement claims so, as I understand). If your religion claims this and only this, it is scientifically compatible because science has nothing to say about souls in stones and bricks. My house will still be a house and function as one, my bricks having a soul or not.

Regarding the sentence about scientists and mathematicians who are people of faith, we shall not forget that there is a lot of views of divined interference. 'God created man' is by some considered metaphor for God creating the earth, abiogenesis and evolution, thus ending up 'creating man'. One more point is, that some of those living hundreds of years back in the past, like Newton, Aristotle, etc. had absolutely no idea about how the universe, the sun and the earth was created, or how the sun worked. If a very well-educated man began to doubt the idea of God creating everything, anybody could point to the sun and ask him to explain it: How could a fire burn forever? At that time, the sun itself looked like a solid proof of something divined.

Answer 4

A belief is scientifically compatible if it does not contradict scientific results.

A bible critic will at once name a series of beliefs which are not scientifically compatible: Age of the earth, creation of Adam and Eve, stopping the rotation of the earth (Josua).

Of course science does not stop. And tomorrow's result may correct or at least update today's result.

Compatibility is a weak criterion to asset beliefs. Additional criteria are the explanatory value of the belief, in the sense of a hypothesis. And also the origin of the belief.