Some Random Thoughts on Science vs. Faith

Most of this blog post material is fairly contextual. It is based on the following books I've read:
1. The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins...
2. In a much smaller way on the book "The Meaning of it all" by Richard Feynman

In addition, the following are also relevant:
1. The "beyond belief" conference videos online at:
http://beyondbelief2006.org/. This had Richard Dawkins as one of the speakers. Neil Degrasse Tyson was another speaker I was very impressed with.
2. "The God Delusion" and a couple of other documentaries made by Richard Dawkins online on youtube.
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I watched a few videos of Richard Dawkins (the selfish Gene guy, and a
hardcore atheist) and others from a workshop/meeting held recently.
http://beyondbelief2006.org/

While my views match those of Richard Dawkins almost entirely, I
feel there is one issue that doesn't seem to get addressed too much
when discussing topics like these.

I have no doubt that there is immensely huge conflict between
science and religion. However there is certainly non-trivial
inspirational value to having faith that a force larger than yourself
is there to back you in your trying times, and in achieving any lofty
goals you may have. Feynman talked a bit about this in his book "The
Meaning of it all".

He simply states that he has no idea
how to derive the inspirational value that faith offers, while
maintaining a scientific temperament where doubt and scepticism are
major virtues.

In one of these videos dawkins talked a bit about having "faith
in faith" i.e. as an atheist taking the stand that faith in God might
be a good thing for some people. It is certainly not much problem if
some other people have value to derive out of faith, but it seems
rather hard if you want to derive that value yourself.

I personally don't see much inspirational value in having God as the
creator, preserver and so on, so these potential areas of conflict
with scientific discoveries are not present. I guess these are
additional concerns if a person derives faith by aligning with an
organized religion.

It unfortunately appears that most people have to make a
compromise somewhere; either have faith and sacrifice clarity of
scientific thought to some degree, or lose out on the potential
inspirational value. Between the two, I'd probably prefer the latter,
though I'd very much like to reap the benefits of inspiration.

I first read the book "The Power of Positive Thinking" by Norman Vincent Peale in 2002 and it had a huge impact on me. Peale was a minister at the marble collegiate church in New York and his book would probably have been nowhere as impactful if not for the references to God. The book in a nutshell tries to convince you of the following idea. You have immense potential and have much more strength to counter adversity than you would think. There is a power larger than yourself and you can tap into the huge reserves of potential it offers, by praying to it in your own way, and by also realizing that you have a massive power backing you in your endeavors. I read the book "Tough times never last but Tough People do" by Robert Schuller, who is apparently widely considered a good successor to Peale. This book however had hardly any impact on me. Undoubtedly Peale's books were far more potent due to their references to God.

A couple of sessions in the beyond belief conference addressed this issue of alternate sources of inspiration, but they didn't seem to be very convincing. The speakers certainly did a good job with the idea that the universe is a wonderful place to be in, far more complex and intricate than what religions and philosophers could imagine etc. However they didn't address the issue of self-belief and hope.


Any online pointers/thoughts addressing this specific issue? Any web search result
seems flooded with people debating about the correctness of different
beliefs etc., and never addressing this specific point, making it hard
to get more thoughts on this.



Vijay
http://www.cs.stanford.edu/~vijayk