-Caveat Lector-
CobolMage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> from: AMERICAN ATHEISTS
> subject: AANEWS for August 24, 1999
>
> A M E R I C A N A T H E I S T S
> #629~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 8/24/99
> http://www.atheists.org
> ftp.atheists.org/pub/atheists/
> http://www.americanatheist.org
>
> ---------------------------------------------
> A Service of AMERICAN ATHEISTS
> "Leading The Way For Atheist Civil Rights
> And The Separation Of State and Church"
> ----------------------------------------------
>
> In This Issue...
> * Scientific American article likely to ignite debate, controversy
> * Atheist group organizing in Union County, N.J.
> * Resources
> * About this list...
>
> GOD AND THE SCIENTISTS: A NEW DEBATE, AN OLD QUESTION
>
<snip>
Atheism/"secular humanism"/agnosticism (the dividing lines are often rather
vague) constitutes a sort of dogma for many prominent scientists...so much so
that for a scientist to be accepted by his/her peers, s/he must publicly
disavow "organized religion"--a process closely akin to the old loyalty oath.
The "ideal scientist" has been created in the image of Stephen Jay Gould or
Carl Sagan, sneering from the heights of intellectual achievement at the hoi
polloi gathering in the cathedrals, all the while promulgating a scientistic
dogma to which one *must* adhere to "be taken seriously" in the academic forum
(just as any politician worth his/her salt absolutely *must* belong to a
church or synagogue or run the risk of being ignored by the electorate). This
begs the question, of course, whether scientists today aren't simply acolytes
of some great Church of the Cosmos, having substituted Knowledge for the
all-powerful personal Deity they purport to have rejected.
The problem with the universe, in the opinion of this one informed
professional, is that our relationship with it seems to echo Haldane's classic
remark, "The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than
we *can* imagine." It is so bizarre that it's often difficult to conceive of
it having been created by the God of the Bible...as the Kansas State Board of
Education, inter alia, would have us do. I suspect that if you were to speak
one-on-one to a representative sample of scientists, you'd find that most of
them believe in *something*--not necessarily what the majority of Americans
would recognize as "God", but a Force (a la *Star Wars*) or an Entity or a
Cosmic Engineer (the universe really *is* a kludge!)...but they wouldn't dare
mention that in the hearing of other scientists.
"On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I believe in Continuous Creation and the
Steady State. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, I believe in the Big Bang.
On Sundays, I pray...with a day off every leap-year for an orgy of sheer
solipsism..." (paraphrased from Robert A. Heinlein, *Stranger in a Strange
Land*)
=================================
Robert F. Tatman
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