johnny9fingers | (no subject)

Entry tags:

religion,
science

(no subject)

Someone needs to give Martin, Lord Rees (the Astronomer Royal) a gentle talking to of the nicest kind: has he been listening too much to Tony Blair?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2089946,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=18

The head of the Royal Society was talking about alliances with the mainstream, and it was at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, but even so...Thank God for Professor Steve Jones.

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To ally between Religion and Science is easy.
Shut up the people who claim there IS a conflict.

don't bend. Don't give in. Don't try to "alter reality to fit faith".
Feel free to be diplomatic though :)

Anyhoo - I agree with you :)

Well, the cold truth is that The Organized Science Bigwigs have been hostile to science in the USA for 60ish years now(Scopes trial), and the modern christian attitude of anti-science is the backlash from that, and I think it is gaining a lot more momentum than is generally perceived. I don't see either as being a good view, but the truth is, being anti-religious creates what Americans might call Fighting Fundies.

I'm prepared to accept a non-rational belief in things (after all, we're all human) however...Wombats and Noah's Ark come to mind. Some things aren't just non-rational, they're a bit...mad. And I think that madness is exactly the same as the lunatic Islamists, inasmuch as it informs every action of these people, and leads folk to contemplate violence against the things which are proscribed in such mad beliefs. Hence the firebombing of abortion clinics, which worse than the abortion clinics themselves.
I think 'fighting fundies' are mad, and if that madness grows in response to the 'cognitive dissonance' they experience in a modern scientific society, those folk could always, like the Amish, discard all the advantages that the last three-hundred years of progress has made, and do without the benefits of Einstein, or Quantum Physics, like for example: vacuum tubes, transistors, computers, drugs targeted according to the genome of the organism concerned, the genetic profiling we do now, magnetic resonace imaging, or even the new batches of antibiotic drugs to deal with the evolving strains of bacterial resistance.
I cannot deny the world I live in because some folk wrote rubbish in a book some thousands of years ago. The fact that the book also contains the description of someone I can admire more, almost, than any other human that has ever lived,* seems to me to be as nothing in comparison to the uses to which these people put the book as a whole. I often wonder what he would think of them. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that this madness is merely that: just madness. And I think the time has come where we as a society should treat it as such.
If necessary, I suppose, the powers that be can always invite me to drink the juice of the hemlock, but I do feel the time has come when we have to work out what to do about the various religious memes infecting people's psyches.
Confucious said (and I paraphrase) that the Gods don't need worshipping: they can take care of themselves, and we should take care of ourselves.
I find myself in agreement.

*I have a lot of time for Siddharta too.

So many spelling and grammatical mistakes. dammit.

I think you miss my thrust. Let me restate.

Taking an antagonistic view of religion and not formally publically thwacking the hysteria of scientists who hate religion has inculculated a generally sullen and quiet dislike of science, in particular biology and physics, among many, many christians. And most christians live in a post-Enlightenment viewpoint. Much of Islam does not seem to even have that post-Enlightenment view.

Allowing famous scientists to take a generally antagonistic approach towards all religion without nuance ill served science, resulting in current views among religious types.

If scientists want to be accepted with Christians in particular, they need to be more nuanced about amusing things like evolution, for instance. Taking that example, it is a little publicized fact that evolution as currently stated - stripping out the philosophy - is a logical explanation for variation on genetics. But, no. Everyone has to add on philosophy/beliefs to it and suddenly it's A Religion Which You Agree/Disagree Choose One.

I tend to see it rather differently.
Since Clarence Darrow lost the first of the 'Monkey Trials' in 1925 the religious fundamentalists have had a 'downer' on science. In fact, Darwin was publically villified some years previously. I don't think it's the scientists fault at all.
Just because some folk are trapped in madness shouldn't mean that the rest of us (herein called the rational) have to put up with it, or take no action beyond conciliation or ignoring the damage the madness does.
I'm coming to think that perhaps we should take a stand.
I don't think that scientists need Christians to do science, but humans need science to fight off disease, adapt scientific ideas to new technologies, and increase our lifespans.
Scientists don't need to be accepted by Christians at all. And if America is going to become a totalitarian Christian Nation (as some of the Christians want) then the rest of the world will happily provide a working environment for the scientists, and the Christians of America can revert to whatever they want to become.
I think we've appeased them rather too much, actually, and the Islamists as well.
I think America needs scientists.
I think it could happily do without the Christians, or any other religion for that matter, whatever my personal beliefs.

And with much less passion this time (sorry if I was a bit...splenetic).
This science as a religion meme that keeps cropping up....I've been thinking about it, and I don't think it's true in any sense: however I will say that science partakes of the religion of truth, Inasmuch as 'the truth', or 'what is the case' is a religion. And science is not the only adherent to this religion: History also bows to truth, Metaphysics and Philosophy too: in fact, almost all of our academic and intellectual disciplines concern themselves with what we can ascertain, with any certainty, given our limitations.
And if truth is a religion then science is one of its congregation.

Now I'm a musician, poet, writer, and artist: so my relationship with truth is, of necessity, considerably more elastic than that of someone in the rigorous disciplines, but I know folk who are seeking after truth when I see 'em, and I know of the delusions that come from history and tradition. Despite being an artist, and despite general deist leanings (because I cannot believe that this is all there is: for if it is, it's a damn poor show for some folk) If push comes to shove I will always side with the rational and those seeking for truth, rather than those seeking to uphold either tradition, prejudice, non-rational belief: From True Historians showing David Irving for what he is, to Scientists attempting to discover the nature of reality at a very small scale.
This is not the first time that Truth and Religion have been in conflict. Of many examples the one that springs to mind is the listing of Emmanuel Kant's work in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (index of prohibited books). The Vatican hated his 'Categorical Moral Imperative' because it synthesised a morality from first principles without recourse to God (and the Vatican in particular).
And it probably won't be the last time that religion and the search for truth come into conflict, either, which is why I'm moving towards the Zero-tolerance position, because as the debate is with folk who brook no argument to their opinions, citing divine precedence or inspiration as both unverifiable and absolute, I think the rational should use logic and fact and analysis, and all the other intellectual tools bequeathed them by the search for truth, in rebutting such silliness.

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