Agronomist, you say

“All of reality is quantitative. If there is no possibility of measuring something, it does not exist.”

So how do you quantify falling in love, or Beethoven’s ninth symphony, or the awe and delight an astrophysicist feels at the images of the horse-head nebula?

I agree scientism is a caricature of science, but it is not a straw man. Many non-scientists, and a few scientists, treat science as if it is self-evident and exhaustive: necessary, sufficient, and exclusively capable of explaining every phenomenon. Science is treated almost as religious authority. Look at the fringes of the debates over climate change or GM crops (ab)use science to claim authority for their positions.

I don't think Peter is attacking science, just pointing out its limitations.

Science certainly does have its limitations. I believe that there are things we cannot and will never be able to measure. Feelings, art, philosophy can only be subjected to scientific analysis in part.

However, Peter's religion asks the unreasonable. Some branches of it demand that one believe that a human female can be impregnated without contact with a male sperm. Are we to accept that? Does Peter himself accept that?

Science has its limitations, but most religion is founded on myth, unsupportable propositions and superstition.

There are mechanisms for ridding science of its errors, but there are no comparable mechanisms in religion.

Sells

"The attempt by biologists to describe this phenomenon in terms of evolutionary theory or human psychology etc. will always fail to provide a complete description of the phenomenon. Such attempts are always reductive. They attempt to describe complex human behaviour in terms of lower levels of physical causation be that evolutionary theory, biochemistry or physiology. What we get is a jumble of lower order explanations but we do not get the whole picture."

...

"They will not tell me why my wife loves me even when I am unlovable."

Evolutionary theory is not trying to "describe" the "whole picture" of why your wife loves you even when you are unloveable.

It's trying to explain cause and effect in the origin of species.

Any theory is only ever an attempt to extract out of the complex reality a simpler explanation. It never tries to be as complex as the reality it is trying to explain, because then it would serve no purpose.

So it is not a valid criticism of evolutionary theory that it doesn't explain the particular form that attraction takes between male and female in every individual action in every individual case. It doesn't need to. It is enough that it explains how we got here, and how our liking for art, beauty, and metaphysics is a result of it.

Jardine,
I have no problems with the theory of evolution, just with the theory being pushed too far.

Dear Sells,

Do you have any problem with the virgin birth, transferability of sin, the trinity and God needing an assistant?

What do you mean by evolution pushed too far?

Those who desire to know about the world ought to use science.

Peter Sellick mentions that there are other ways to know about the world and this is indeed supported by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras, accordingly, if one concentrates deep enough and long enough on a physical object, they may get to know all its properties. However, warns Patanjali, that would be a despicable waste, for one who after so many years of effort attained such rare powers of concentration should use them to concentrate on God instead.

Phanto asked an important question: "Why do you feel the need to know these things? Life is meant to be lived - not analysed." - now I extend this question to the objective: while the best and safest method to know about the world is science, why that need to know about the world in the first place?