The current issue of Time magazine has a cover story on Mother Teresa, according to which if she applied the rational standards that Neal describes she would have been an atheist. The fact that she held to her faith despite evidence that Jesus had abandoned her and perhaps even that god did not exist is taken as proof of her religious virtue. I find that hard to reconcile with the viewpoint expressed below.
Bill Silvert ----- Original Message ----- From: "Neal Bryan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 4:56 PM Subject: Re: why scientists believe in evolution >I agree that scientists do not *believe* in, but rather accept evolution. > However, I reject the claim there are no evidences of, or testable > hypotheses for, religious beliefs. SOME (but not all) religious people > "just > believe without testing alternative and testable hypotheses." Exercising > faith in and acting on a religious principle (pick one) is subjecting it > to > a test. Consider one's life before application of the treatment as a > control. Data are taken by experiencing the effect of the treatment in > one's life. Certainly not hard data, but there are academic disciplines > not > held to hard data either. Why, ecology was once (and is still considered > by > some to be) a soft science. Once observational and descriptive, we now > consider ecology all grown up, with numbers and statistics to manipulate > them. Yet we are still grappling with concepts like thresholds of > detectability in wildlife ecology. Is religion not afforded type I > errors? > It is a different paradigm, but cannot, I think, be rejected outright. > There *is* quite a body of supporting literature, misinterpreted as it may > be. Is the ID argument not logical, *given* that God at least existed at > one time? In the extreme interpretation, it is certainly more > parsimonious > than some of the alternatives. My argument strays from the disproof of > evolution by testable hypotheses, and I apologize. However, the > scientific > evidence for evolution is convincing (I accept it), but is of course not > incontrovertible.
