Warren,
This discussion is interesting, because it is so "Western European". We
forget that it is not just science versus christian perspectives out
there. There are approximately 2 billion christians out there, but this
lumps Southern Baptists with Roman Catholics, and they sure have little
in common with respect to their core beliefs. Islam is the second
largest (and growing) single religion (with around 1.3 billion), but by
the civil war in Iraq, we see that they are not quite unified either.
There are so many religious superstitions that it is clear that they
cannot all be right, and if they are not all right, then who is to say
which, if any is right? I am reminded of a quote:
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer
god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other
possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
-Stephen Roberts
You stated that science will never explain everything. I would reply
that which science cannot explain, nothing can explain. There indeed are
things that are inexplicable today. It is not an explanation to say
"god did it." The christian "intelligent design" concept is just that,
christian, not a general alternative to a scientific perspective. There
are many superstitious perspectives out there that are not scientific,
and perhaps some that are. Should we give them all equal credibility?
Should we demand rights for an unbiased education for all of them?
No. We should demand that children are taught to think critically in
school, and the scientific method is the most effective way of
understanding nature invented as of yet. Thus, the scientific method
should be taught in schools, and all the many superstitions should have
no place in school - after all, to be fair, we should have either none,
or all! Science is not a religion, it is a method of knowing, and so to
teach scientific thinking is not analogous to teaching religion.
Cheers,
Jim
Warren W. Aney said the following on 07/May/07 18:01:
> As scientists, we need to understand and appreciate the wide range of views
> in the religious world. Particularly in the Christian sphere, these views
> range all the way from strict biblical inerrancy ("the Bible was written by
> man but dictated by God") to that of an appreciation for the biblical
> stories as one culture's attempts to understand and explain the
> inexplicable.
>
> So with the subject of evolution some religious groups may say that creation
> happened 6000 years ago in the exact 6-day timeframe and sequence as
> described in the first chapter of Genesis (ignoring or rationalizing away
> some conflicting sequences described in another creation story in the second
> chapter of Genesis). The intelligent design proponents may say these
> Genesis stories are more allegorical, that all this may have taken billions
> of years as science says, but God intervened and continues to intervene at
> each stage of the process (the tinkering clockmaker metaphor). The Deists
> say that God set the process in motion but has not been involved since (God
> as the perfect clockmaker). And then some say that God set in motion a
> process and a set of laws that produced what we scientifically understand (a
> self-adjusting and ever-changing clock, to carry the metaphor to an
> extreme).
>
> All of these religious viewpoints would agree that there are things that
> science will never be able to explain. In the who-what-where-when-why-how
> of inquiry, they say the realm of science is the what-where-when-how and the
> realm of religion is the who-why (perhaps it would be more precise to say
> that science handles "why" and "what" at the cause and effect level but
> religion deals with them at the transcendent level).
>
> Some religious groups have insisted and continue to insist that science will
> never be able to demonstrate some of the what-where-when-how stuff (600
> years ago it was the motion of the earth around the sun, now it's evidence
> of one species actually evolving into another). That's what seems to be
> behind their promoting the investigation of certain high-profile concepts
> such as creationism with scientific methodology, e.g., the International
> Journal of Creation Research. But these efforts tend to be self-defeating
> as science continues to find solid explanations for these phenomena: today's
> divine intervention becomes tomorrow's testable hypothesis and next year's
> verified and measured fact.
>
> Other religious groups are quite satisfied to say, with some confidence,
> that science will never provide an explanation for such basic questions as:
> Why is there something instead of nothing? What is nothing? What was there
> before there was something? What is beyond the universe? What is beyond
> time? Since information is infinite and we are finite, can we ever know
> everything? These are the inexplicables, these others say, that fall into
> the realm of religion.
>
> So where we get into trouble as scientists is when we insist that only the
> scientifically observable realm is real and important; that the religious
> realm is just irrelevant superstition. We may indidually choose to believe
> that to be the case, but we shouldn't do so with a hubris of scientific
> arrogance by saying, in effect, if it can't be measured it can't be valid.
> As I said before, science is never going to be able to explain everything.
> What science can and will explain is crucial, but some of the inexplicables
> are pretty important to quite a few other people. And many of these other
> people are rational scientists.
>
> Warren W. Aney
> Senior Wildlife Ecologist
> (and Presbyterian elder)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Ashwani Vasishth
> Sent: Saturday, 05 May, 2007 08:22
> To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
> Subject: News: Conservatives Split Over Darwin and Evolution
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/05/us/politics/05darwin.html?ref=science
>
> A Split Emerges as Conservatives Discuss Darwin
>
> By PATRICIA COHEN
> Published: May 5, 2007
>
> Evolution has long generated bitter fights between the left and the
> right about whether God or science better explains the origins of
> life. But now a dispute has cropped up within conservative circles,
> not over science, but over political ideology: Does Darwinian theory
> undermine conservative notions of religion and morality or does it
> actually support conservative philosophy?
>
> On one level the debate can be seen as a polite discussion of
> political theory among the members of a small group of intellectuals.
> But the argument also exposes tensions within the Republicans' "big
> tent," as could be seen Thursday night when the party's 10 candidates
> for president were asked during their first debate whether they
> believed in evolution. Three - Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; Mike
> Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas; and Representative Tom
> Tancredo of Colorado - indicated they did not.
>
> For some conservatives, accepting Darwin undercuts religious faith
> and produces an amoral, materialistic worldview that easily embraces
> abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other practices they
> abhor. As an alternative to Darwin, many advocate intelligent design,
> which holds that life is so intricately organized that only an
> intelligent power could have created it.
>
> Yet it is that very embrace of intelligent design - not to mention
> creationism, which takes a literal view of the Bible's Book of
> Genesis - that has led conservative opponents to speak out for fear
> their ideology will be branded as out of touch and anti-science.
>
> [...]
>
> Cheers,
> -
> Ashwani
> Vasishth [EMAIL PROTECTED] (818) 677-6137
> http://www.csun.edu/~vasishth/
> http://www.myspace.com/ashwanivasishth
>
>
--
James J. Roper, Ph.D. <http://jjroper.googlepages.com/home>
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