What is off limits for science is a massive current debate. Dawkins certainly thinks that God is not off limits and that science clearly indicates that God is a fairy tale.
Other's such as John Polkinghorne also say that God is not off limits for science and point to fine tuning etc. and make the inference that God does exist.
Having read people from both sides of the argument, my own personal opinion is that the universe leads only to agnosticism and that anyone who finds anything else has not been doing 'value-free science' - they have brought their prior assumptions to the lab.
I hope the thread doesn't stick here though.
I am interested also in
1. The belief that scientific progress will be a panacea for all human ills.
What can we reasonably expect from science?
2. Science is the only way to understand the human animal and that an evolutionary understanding of ourselves is the best way forward.
We can take it as a foregone conclusion that evolutionary theory is correct. What I am really asking is, is it entirely helpful to see all human behaviour throught he prism of evolutionary drives? Are there aspects of behaviour that have arisen without a driver simply through the complexity of our brains (emergent properties) and through our modern environment.
I obviously know that any idea of a spiritual aspect to our behaviour is clearly off limits here.
I hope I am not hijacking this thread and will happily explore further any of the issues that have been raised, they're all interesting.
Blacknad.
What can we reasonably expect from science?
From science we expect Understanding of things (and problems) in the material, physical world.
What we do with that understanding; how it is applied, is a decidely unscientific process.
Though I suppose if you examine the sociology and psychology of decisions, they can all be explained scientifically (which is an answer to Question 2, I guess).
Well, maybe not.
RE: Q2:
Not all existing traits are a result of selection, many arise and persist randomly (but may be selected for/against if the pressures change in the future). So doesn't this mean that there could be behaviours not explained by our past evolution.
I'd also like to point out that there is a pretty big value judgement in concluding what has and hasn't been selected for during evolution. How can we be aware of all the pressures, or what traits actually mean for long term survival? How can we say what is best for the survival of any species or of all life. What's best for one species, may not be best for the whole web.
It'd sure be easy to argue that vaccines have greatly reduced our genetic robustness, but I wouldn't want to argue against vaccines with that as my "moral" viewpoint.
Hope this makes sense; it's past time for sleep....
~~SA
