Long before science came of age in the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, religion had been struggling to make sense of the world for millennia. Sometimes they got it right, but mostly they had no idea how the world works and had no systematic method to determine as much. This article explores the relationship between science and religion in terms of what was known back then and what is known now.
Political theorist Yoram Hazony argues that the best hope for Western democracy is a return to the empiricist, religious, and nationalist traditions of America and Britain. Shermer makes the case for Enlightenment liberalism, with its focus on science and reason, as the primary driver of moral progress over the centuries.
Shermer and Strevens discuss: irrationality and how it drives science • the knowledge machine • the replication crisis, what caused it, and what to do about it • verification vs. falsification • the iron rule of explanation • Bayesian reasoning vs. falsification • climate/evolution skeptics • model dependent realism • humanism • theistic arguments for: God, origin of life, morality, consciousness • known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns • how to evaluate media sources of science.
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