Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
I think that what I'm getting at is some agreed upon notion of Gould's NOMA. How does science answer the right questions about people, while leaving humans to exist within their own cultures/religions?
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Aaahhh... ok now I think I see where you are coming from.
Personally I don't think the idea of Nonoverlapping Magisteria works, for a few reasons.
In theory people say they adhere to a value system that is derived from some external source (The Bible or whatever), in reality there's some natural source of consensus about decency and justice. I say natural because a) it changes over time, sometimes slowly sometimes radically by an individual or small group of reformists and b) people adhere to it more closely than they do to the professed source of their values, disregarding those sources when they contradict the consensus values. And we disregard the sources that have values we don't agree with (cults, etc).
So right away "natural selection" of values has overlapped magisteria. Our values are a result of natural selection and I think are fully within the realm of scientific research and understanding. I think it's completely reasonable to understand in scientific terms the why and how of valuing life, love, and all that "fuzzy" stuff.