| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"johac" |
| Date: |
21 Nov 2006 01:45:12 AM |
| Object: |
A Free-for-All on Science and Religion |
Damn! I didn't know that this was going on in my hometown. I would have
liked to have attended.
---
November 21, 2006
A Free-for-All on Science and Religion
By GEORGE JOHNSON
Maybe the pivotal moment came when Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in
physics, warned that the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare
of religious belief, or when a Nobelist in chemistry, Sir Harold Kroto,
called for the John Templeton Foundation to give its next $1.5 million
prize for progress in spiritual discoveries to an atheist Richard
Dawkins, the Oxford evolutionary biologist whose book The God Delusion
is a national best-seller.
Or perhaps the turning point occurred at a more solemn moment, when Neil
deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and
an adviser to the Bush administration on space exploration, hushed the
audience with heartbreaking photographs of newborns misshapen by birth
defects testimony, he suggested, that blind nature, not an intelligent
overseer, is in control.
Somewhere along the way, a forum this month at the Salk Institute for
Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., which might have been one more
polite dialogue between science and religion, began to resemble the
founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a
world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an
evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story
ever told.
Carolyn Porco, a senior research scientist at the Space Science
Institute in Boulder, Colo., called, half in jest, for the establishment
of an alternative church, with Dr. Tyson, whose powerful celebration of
scientific discovery had the force and cadence of a good sermon, as its
first minister.
She was not entirely kidding. We should let the success of the religious
formula guide us, Dr. Porco said. Lets teach our children from a very
young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness
and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome and even
comforting than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.
She displayed a picture taken by the Cassini spacecraft of Saturn and
its glowing rings eclipsing the Sun, revealing in the shadow a barely
noticeable speck called Earth.
There has been no shortage of conferences in recent years, commonly
organized by the Templeton Foundation, seeking to smooth over the
differences between science and religion and ending in a metaphysical
draw. Sponsored instead by the Science Network, an educational
organization based in California, and underwritten by a San Diego
investor, Robert Zeps (who acknowledged his role as a kind of
anti-Templeton), the La Jolla meeting, Beyond Belief: Science, Religion,
Reason and Survival, rapidly escalated into an invigorating intellectual
free-for-all. (Unedited video of the proceedings will be posted on the
Web at tsntv.org.)
A presentation by Joan Roughgarden, a Stanford University biologist, on
using biblical metaphor to ease her fellow Christians into accepting
evolution (a mutation is a mustard seed of DNA) was dismissed by Dr.
Dawkins as bad poetry, while his own take-no-prisoners approach
(religious education is brainwashing and child abuse) was condemned by
the anthropologist Melvin J. Konner, who said he had not a flicker of
religious faith, as simplistic and uninformed.
After enduring two days of talks in which the Templeton Foundation came
under the gun as smudging the line between science and faith, Charles L.
Harper Jr., its senior vice president, lashed back, denouncing what he
called pop conflict books like Dr. Dawkinss God Delusion, as
commercialized ideological scientism promoting for profit the
philosophy that science has a monopoly on truth.
That brought an angry rejoinder from Richard P. Sloan, a professor of
behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, who said his
own book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, was
written to counter garbage research financed by Templeton on, for
example, the healing effects of prayer.
With atheists and agnostics outnumbering the faithful (a few believing
scientists, like Francis S. Collins, author of The Language of God: A
Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, were invited but could not
attend), one speaker after another called on their colleagues to be less
timid in challenging teachings about nature based only on scripture and
belief. The core of science is not a mathematical model; it is
intellectual honesty, said Sam Harris, a doctoral student in
neuroscience and the author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and
the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation.
Every religion is making claims about the way the world is, he said.
These are claims about the divine origin of certain books, about the
virgin birth of certain people, about the survival of the human
personality after death. These claims purport to be about reality.
By shying away from questioning peoples deeply felt beliefs, even the
skeptics, Mr. Harris said, are providing safe harbor for ideas that are
at best mistaken and at worst dangerous. I dont know how many more
engineers and architects need to fly planes into our buildings before we
realize that this is not merely a matter of lack of education or
economic despair, he said.
Dr. Weinberg, who famously wrote toward the end of his 1977 book on
cosmology, The First Three Minutes, that the more the universe seems
comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless, went a step further:
Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should
be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.
With a rough consensus that the grand stories of evolution by natural
selection and the blossoming of the universe from the Big Bang are
losing out in the intellectual marketplace, most of the discussion came
down to strategy. How can science fight back without appearing to be
just one more ideology?
There are six billion people in the world, said Francisco J. Ayala, an
evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine, and a
former Roman Catholic priest. If we think that we are going to persuade
them to live a rational life based on scientific knowledge, we are not
only dreaming it is like believing in the fairy godmother.
People need to find meaning and purpose in life, he said. I dont think
we want to take that away from them.
Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University known
for his staunch opposition to teaching creationism, found himself in the
unfamiliar role of playing the moderate. I think we need to respect
peoples philosophical notions unless those notions are wrong, he said.
The Earth isnt 6,000 years old, he said. The Kennewick man was not a
Umatilla Indian. But whether there really is some kind of supernatural
being Dr. Krauss said he was a nonbeliever is a question unanswerable
by theology, philosophy or even science. Science does not make it
impossible to believe in God, Dr. Krauss insisted. We should recognize
that fact and live with it and stop being so pompous about it.
That was just the kind of accommodating attitude that drove Dr. Dawkins
up the wall. I am utterly fed up with the respect that we all of us,
including the secular among us are brainwashed into bestowing on
religion, he said. Children are systematically taught that there is a
higher kind of knowledge which comes from faith, which comes from
revelation, which comes from scripture, which comes from tradition, and
that it is the equal if not the superior of knowledge that comes from
real evidence.
By the third day, the arguments had become so heated that Dr. Konner was
reminded of a den of vipers.
With a few notable exceptions, he said, the viewpoints have run the
gamut from A to B. Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a
baseball bat?
His response to Mr. Harris and Dr. Dawkins was scathing. I think that
you and Richard are remarkably apt mirror images of the extremists on
the other side, he said, and that you generate more fear and hatred of
science.
Dr. Tyson put it more gently. Persuasion isnt always Here are the facts
youre an idiot or you are not, he said. I worry that your methods he
turned toward Dr. Dawkins how articulately barbed you can be, end up
simply being ineffective, when you have much more power of influence.
Chastened for a millisecond, Dr. Dawkins replied, I gratefully accept
the rebuke.
In the end it was Dr. Tysons celebration of discovery that stole the
show. Scientists may scoff at people who fall back on explanations
involving an intelligent designer, he said, but history shows that the
most brilliant people who ever walked this earth were doing the same
thing. When Isaac Newtons Principia Mathematica failed to account for
the stability of the solar system why the planets tugging at one
anothers orbits have not collapsed into the Sun Newton proposed that
propping up the mathematical mobile was an intelligent and powerful
being.
It was left to Pierre Simon Laplace, a century later, to take the next
step. Hautily telling Napoleon that he had no need for the God
hypothesis, Laplace extended Newtons mathematics and opened the way to a
purely physical theory.
What concerns me now is that even if youre as brilliant as Newton, you
reach a point where you start basking in the majesty of God and then
your discovery stops it just stops, Dr. Tyson said. Youre no good
anymore for advancing that frontier, waiting for somebody else to come
behind you who doesnt have God on the brain and who says: Thats a really
cool problem. I want to solve it.
Science is a philosophy of discovery; intelligent design is a philosophy
of ignorance, he said. Something fundamental is going on in peoples
minds when they confront things they dont understand.
He told of a time, more than a millennium ago, when Baghdad reigned as
the intellectual center of the world, a history fossilized in the night
sky. The names of the constellations are Greek and Roman, Dr. Tyson
said, but two-thirds of the stars have Arabic names. The words algebra
and algorithm are Arabic.
But sometime around 1100, a dark age descended. Mathematics became seen
as the work of the devil, as Dr. Tyson put it. Revelation replaced
investigation, he said, and the intellectual foundation collapsed.
He did not have to say so, but the implication was that maybe a century,
maybe a millennium from now, the names of new planets, stars and
galaxies might be Chinese. Or there may be no one to name them at all.
Before he left to fly back home to Austin, Dr. Weinberg seemed to soften
for a moment, describing religion a bit fondly as a crazy old aunt.
She tells lies, and she stirs up all sorts of mischief and shes getting
on, and she may not have that much life left in her, but she was
beautiful once, he lamented. When shes gone, we may miss her.
Dr. Dawkins wasnt buying it. I won't miss her at all, he said. Not a
scrap. Not a smidgen.
---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/science/21belief.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
.
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| User: "Nicola" |
|
| Title: Re: A Free-for-All on Science and Religion |
22 Nov 2006 12:49:09 PM |
|
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On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 23:45:12 -0800, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com>
wrote:
That brought an angry rejoinder from Richard P. Sloan, a professor of
behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, who said his
own book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, was
written to counter garbage research financed by Templeton on, for
example, the healing effects of prayer.
IIRC, the research concluded that prayer had no effect whatsoever.
Many Christians found themselves in the awkward position of having to
rubbish their own research because they didn't happen to like the
results.
With a few notable exceptions, he said, the viewpoints have run the
gamut from A to B. Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a
baseball bat?
Both.
His response to Mr. Harris and Dr. Dawkins was scathing. I think that
you and Richard are remarkably apt mirror images of the extremists on
the other side, he said, and that you generate more fear and hatred of
science.
This is a daft response. The idea that people should temper their
opinions for fear of offending the religious community is dangerous.
I've seen it everywhere. Even after centuries of persecution, there
are atheists who are so scared of offending religious people that they
bite their tongues, refuse to become involved in any sort of
activities to limit the powers of the various cults on offer, and
ensure that these dangerous organisations hang onto their power and
influence.
Before he left to fly back home to Austin, Dr. Weinberg seemed to soften
for a moment, describing religion a bit fondly as a crazy old aunt.
She tells lies, and she stirs up all sorts of mischief and shes getting
on, and she may not have that much life left in her, but she was
beautiful once, he lamented. When shes gone, we may miss her.
That made me laugh. An Aunt who committed serial genocide, burned and
tortured thousands and continues to slash and burn her way through
'heretics' at a terrifying rate paints a slightly more realistic
picture. The idea that religion is no longer dangerous is incredibly
naive. There are enough Muslim and Christian terrorists in the world
to ensure that the horror will continue for the rest of our lives.
Thanks for posting this - there was a report in New Scientist (online
version) but it wasn't as detailed.
Nicola
www.banfaithschools.org.uk
--
Posted via NewsDemon.com - Premium Uncensored Newsgroup Service
------->>>>>>http://www.NewsDem
.
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| User: "johac" |
|
| Title: Re: A Free-for-All on Science and Religion |
22 Nov 2006 11:44:33 PM |
|
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In article <vcu8m2ptpopf0hdmq4nvuvpjabl18p98nc@4ax.com>,
Nicola <nicola@banfaithschools.org.uk> wrote:
On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 23:45:12 -0800, johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com>
wrote:
That brought an angry rejoinder from Richard P. Sloan, a professor of
behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, who said his
own book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, was
written to counter garbage research financed by Templeton on, for
example, the healing effects of prayer.
IIRC, the research concluded that prayer had no effect whatsoever.
Many Christians found themselves in the awkward position of having to
rubbish their own research because they didn't happen to like the
results.
That's what I recall. There was no statistical difference.
With a few notable exceptions, he said, the viewpoints have run the
gamut from A to B. Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a
baseball bat?
Both.
His response to Mr. Harris and Dr. Dawkins was scathing. I think that
you and Richard are remarkably apt mirror images of the extremists on
the other side, he said, and that you generate more fear and hatred of
science.
This is a daft response. The idea that people should temper their
opinions for fear of offending the religious community is dangerous.
I've seen it everywhere. Even after centuries of persecution, there
are atheists who are so scared of offending religious people that they
bite their tongues, refuse to become involved in any sort of
activities to limit the powers of the various cults on offer, and
ensure that these dangerous organisations hang onto their power and
influence.
It seems that the religious are not adverse to attacking, condemning,
and insulting those who don't agree with their superstition. The Phelps
family comes to mind.
Before he left to fly back home to Austin, Dr. Weinberg seemed to soften
for a moment, describing religion a bit fondly as a crazy old aunt.
She tells lies, and she stirs up all sorts of mischief and shes getting
on, and she may not have that much life left in her, but she was
beautiful once, he lamented. When shes gone, we may miss her.
That made me laugh. An Aunt who committed serial genocide, burned and
tortured thousands and continues to slash and burn her way through
'heretics' at a terrifying rate paints a slightly more realistic
picture. The idea that religion is no longer dangerous is incredibly
naive. There are enough Muslim and Christian terrorists in the world
to ensure that the horror will continue for the rest of our lives.
And well beyond, it seems.
Thanks for posting this - there was a report in New Scientist (online
version) but it wasn't as detailed.
You're welcome.
Nicola
www.banfaithschools.org.uk
--
Posted via NewsDemon.com - Premium Uncensored Newsgroup Service
------->>>>>>http://www.NewsDem
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
.
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