NOMA - THE BIZARRE NOTION THAT GOD AS MAKER OF ALL AND ULTIMATE CONCERN TREATS SCIENCE AS A SEPARATE SUBJECT FROM HIMSELF!
Science is about precision. It looks at what it can be precise about to learn more. If you don't know exactly what water is then you will be making tea with vodka. Science works out what precise truths it might learn from experiments. It wants to know the truths when it sees them. Anything else is trying to hide behind the vague or semi-clear or the ineffable. It is as bad as believing in magic or mysticism. The supernatural cannot be examined and tested. At most the scientist can say, "I don't know what happened there." And science warns that letting assumptions creep in is not science and is anti-science. Yet religious culture seems to validate scientists saying that and validates you going further and saying, "It's God." That is a shameless double standard. We are all scientists don't forget that. We are mostly bad scientists but scientists all the same.
NOMA opposes that. It stands for Non Overlapping Magisteria. It seeks to refute the allegation that science and religion cannot fit or cohere. It orders science not to claim it can refute the idea that an intelligent power is needed to explain the origin and the seeming design in the universe.
Its deviser, Stephen Jay Gould says that religion is about the why or the purpose of existence and not about the how. But in science, all whys do not demand an answer. You do not ask why a leaf cannot talk to you.
The ultimate purpose of existence denies the validity of the notion, "Maybe
the ultimate purpose for me is for this hour or this day. Maybe it will be
another one tomorrow."
The most repulsive thing about NOMA is how fundamentalists use it but don't tell
their flocks the whole story. Catholics have taken Gould out of context to argue
that Catholicism and science fit each other and compliment each other. But
Catholicism is not about mere values. It insists for example that it is a fact
that Mary had a baby without a man being involved.
The Catholic Church however says NOMA is wrong and that the correct view is
that religion and science go hand in hand. In other words, a non-religious
scientist is not a scientist at all. A non-scientific or ignorant person of
religious faith is not a person of religious faith at all. It is obvious that it
is absurd to say the two fields belong together. You cannot expect everybody to
be a scientist. Saints do not read science manuals but holy books. It redefines
religion as being science from another angle that is married to “normal”
science.
NOMA claims to keep science out of religion. It does not. To say that science
cannot refute a hiding creator God is not keeping science out of religion. It is
involving theology.
Science and religion agree that mathematics is valid.
The doctrine of God as understood by Christianity contradicts sets. God has all
power and indeed is all power. Imagine an object that represents all power.
There is no creation. Here it is.
O
But if creation takes place and it is not made of this power but by it you get
O and a new object representing the universe O
But that contradicts O being all power. The new object is also power but not
that power.
Theologians would put O inside O but that would mean the creation is a part of
God. It does not work.
NOMA is total nonsense.
Gould an unbeliever should have known better. Or did he lie in order to help
religion cease to be so hostile to science?
Ignoring God is more atheistic than denial of God
Science is based on the idea that from nothing nothing comes. Religion says
nothing comes from nothing but God can make something come from nothing. Science
cannot test how the universe came to be for you cannot test nothing to make sure
it is nothing. Science does not deal with the question of creation by God in
that sense. Ignoring God is more anti God than denying God’s existence. Denying
God means you have looked at the question and thus honoured the idea of God
enough to do that. Ignoring God is thus in a real sense more atheistic than
denying God would be. It is more hostile in a sense too. Religion would state
that to ignore a being that by definition should not be ignored if he exists is
hostile.
If you ignore God you are effectively denying him or that he matters. A God that
cannot matter to you is not God to you. Atheism would be stronger if more people
ignored God and the God question. Ignoring often is more contagious than
denying.
Gould redefined religion as spiritual values such as kindness and so on. This
is too shallow. It is too vague. It is ignoring the complexity of
religion. Would you really need Hinduism to be Hinduism or Catholicism to
be Catholicism if religion was really just about values everybody accepts?
NOMA is applied mostly to God but there is more to religion than just God.
And there is more to God than just God. What if God really wrote the Bible
to be his word for us for all time? You cannot just talk about religion
being values as in kindness or whatever when the Bible God says it is kindness
to believe what he has in the Bible and to urge others to believe it?
NOMA is such a pack of lies that the atheist Gould who propagated it must have been thinking of how many scientists and scientific bodies are on the religious payroll and need sympathetic religious politician to fund them. Rather than respecting science, it downgrades it. How atheist was Gould? Gould held that looking at the data shows that evolution jumped rapidly. New species appear suddenly in the fossil record. This would not fit Darwin's natural selection doctrine.
It is religion that gave this dishonest man and his stupid theory oxygen. Otherwise it should have went out of air before it even left his mouth.