NOMA or the NON-OVERLAPPING MAGISTERIA THE RUBBISH CLAIM THAT SCIENCE AND RELIGION CANNOT CONFLICT FOR THEY ARE NOT ABOUT THE SAME THINGS
NOMA SAYS, Religion is about a transcendent reality that is beyond the universe we see of matter and energy. It is not therefore subject to nature's rules. It can or does make the rules.
What is the relationship between religion/supernatural and science?
#It could be conflict. One opposes the other and you must align with one of them.
#It could be independence - one refers to one kind of truth and the other to another.
#It could be collaboration - this would be the preferred one for religion where science helps support religious claims and religion cherishes science.
Capra wrote, "Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science but man needs both." But does it follow that man can have both? A slave cannot have two masters. Jesus said you cannot love God and money. It is one or the other. He meant that God is to be loved for his own sake. If you love money for the sake of God that means you don't love it for itself. If you love money for itself that contradicts the love due to God, total exclusive love.
Stephen Jay Gould argued that there is no conflict between real religion and
real science. There is no overlap, according to him, between the authorities of
science and religion. There is a Non-Overlapping Magisteria or NOMA.
He interpreted religion though as being about values not facts. So NOMA is
not about religion so much as his understanding of what a religion is.
Many religions do not accept that they are just about moral values. They
say they are more than just philosophies.
Religions like Hare Krishna are dismissed as being real religions for Prabhupada was clear in the book, Life Comes from Life, that scientists are thieves from God. The Mormon faith, Scientology, Urantia and others are clear that they have a lot to say about science and their books do the science for them.
Another problem is that there is no science. Science is one word for a whole conundrum of sciences. A scientist need not be a scientist where psychology or medicine is concerned. Science consists of several branches. Darwinian evolution is one. Struggle is another for survival of the most adaptable is true whether evolution is true or not. Cosmology is another and it contradicts the tidy vision of the Bible as to how all things began and basically says that violence and luck got us to where we are and that only happened because we are an unimaginable distance from the beginning of time. The Bible gives the impression that Adam and Eve did not live many millions of years ago. The Bible certainly implies that there were no dinosaurs on earth when Adam and Eve lived. Thus for the likes of Gould and the Christians to glibly say science and religion fit is breathtaking in its arrogance. It thwarts the huge need to conduct colossal research. It is a matter for research and experimentation and cross-checking not opinion.
Survival of the most adaptable and how that adaptability is at the mercy of chance is the science behind all sciences. This is totally anti-God and says that if there is a God then he would have to be just as cruel as chance is. All investigation happens simply because we know our adaptability and we have to treat it as something that could be lost in a second.
NOMA encourages and opens the door to thinking that evolution is guided to effect progress. Humans want to think they are worth the horrible terrible endless suffering and blood that led to us being here today. Science says that if we had no appeared something maybe better or a bit worse might have appeared in our place. Perhaps it would be a planet of apes like in the films. We are not here as a result of progress. It is random forces that just happened to work out in our favour. Other creatures in the world would not see us as progress but as anything but. The idea of survival of the fittest looks like it promotes progress but it does not. Evolution is not about progress. A stone falling in the pond making a nice pattern is not about making nice patterns. To say evolution really is evolution as in progress is to say it is about promoting the best and weeding out the non-best. That hardly fits any ethic that encourages us to love and so it cannot fit or arise from a God of love. NOMA is stupid. NOMA does not know what science is so it cannot say science and religion fit.
Reason is science. Science is reason. Reason is basically if a then not b. Science does everything with that principle. Just seeing that your tea is cold not hot is science. Your body is the machine you do the experiment with. The computer in your head is what is assessing and interpreting and understand the experiment. Science at its core goes back to all that. Science is about what can be tested to see if it is there. Then it thinks about it. So reason is based on natural things. Metaphysical reasoning is not reasoning at all. There is no test to see if a being without parts or material components or a body can exist. NOMA is an outrage for ignoring these truths.
Reason is nature thinking about itself for you are part of nature.
NOMA orders religion to keep out of science and not be stating what it thinks
are religious facts. Facts are facts whether they are religious or not.
Facts are not really religious. NOMA is then not as tolerant of religion
as it tries to look.
DETECTABILITY
God being creator means all that exists depends totally on him.
It is said by the Catholic Church that science only detects what is material and God by definition is not a material being so it is a mistake to think God doesn’t exist or at least probably does not exist because science hasn’t detected him. This argument supposes science is not religion and religion is not science. But some religions argue that as all truth comes from God maths and science are religious even if they don't know it. So the argument is a deliberate lie and does not fit the doctrine of a creator God who is the origin of all truth.
The doctrine of God says that he is not a thing that can be detected like a marble can be but the most important thing is that God is activity. God then can be detected indirectly. We need to be careful and realise that direct and indirect can be equally important. We need to watch that we don’t see an indirect cause as always being lesser than a direct one. Thus the Church is fibbing. Science does oppose God in the sense that it denies any need for him for it does not see any activity that could be his or any need for it. What more denial is needed?
If science says that religion is a separate matter it does not follow that religion will say the same. Indeed religion cannot.
SO?
Jesus put science ahead of spirituality in John 3:12. " If I have spoken to you about earthly things, and you believe not: how will you believe, if I shall speak to you concerning heavenly things? For once he made a little sense. NOMA’s doctrine that science and religion are totally separate and therefore and not contradict each other is illogical. Two disciplines being separate and does not mean they are non-contradictory. Just because science cannot answer a question doesn’t mean religion can. It does not mean that science will not answer the question one day. The science that reaches us may have no answer but maybe science has found the answer and the word has not circulated well yet. Not all answers are really answers. An answer by religion or superstition is best seen as a suggestion not an answer. Religious or not, a real answer will be granted by evidence and nothing else. It is not about opinion or guesses.
Science tries to avoid faith and repose on hard facts. It thinks about things in a hard untrusting way. Thus a God who sets up science does not want a relationship with us. No God would misdirect. If science has faith after all then that is in spite of itself. There is faith involved in science than religion or spiritual trust in God for it does not endorse faith in magic/miracle supernatural. Science has to work using mathematical sets and maths is no good if there could be a hidden magical interference.
NOMA is just popular for religious ideology needs it to be. It is not popular because it has any intellectual merit. Gould did not believe NOMA himself for he said:
"In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent'. I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."
To repudiate faith and miracles like that tells us what his gut instinct is. Science in fact by assuming that it can predict and it expects those predictions to come to pass is using atheism as in - God will not change anything and will not create a new natural law to replace the current one - as a scientific method. Simple.
NOMA confuses possibility with probability. Possibility never counts. Probability counts. If it is possible religion and science fits they might as well not fit for it is always possible you are wrong.
Science is the enemy of religion.
