Cambridge University philosopher Tim Crane notes that more people today turn to religion than to science. The widespread popularity of religion, he feels, is due not to ignorance or irrationality, but rather to “the kind of intellectual, emotional and practical appeal that religion has for people, which is a very different appeal from the kind of appeal that science has”.
Taken as hypotheses, religious claims do very badly: they are ad hoc, they are arbitrary, they rarely make predictions and when they do they almost never come true. Yet the striking fact is that it does not worry Christians when this happens. In the gospels Jesus predicts the end of the world and the coming of the kingdom of God. It does not worry believers that Jesus was wrong (even if it causes theologians to reinterpret what is meant by ‘the kingdom of God’). If Jesus was framing something like a scientific hypothesis, then it should worry them. Critics of religion might say that this just shows the manifest irrationality of religion. But what it suggests to me is that that something else is going on, other than hypothesis formation. ….
Tim Crane, “Mystery and Evidence”, NY Times Opinionator, 5 September 2010.
Claims in economics often do as badly as religious claims, for much the same reason: “they are ad hoc, they are arbitrary, they rarely make predictions and when they do they almost never come true”. Moreover, like religious claims, they can never be disproved. See my posts on “economics as faith“.
Tags: faith
