Science v Religion in NYT

[Doug]

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. “Let’s 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.”

...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. Dawkins’s “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.”

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?

...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 she’s getting on, and she may not have that much life left in her, but she was beautiful once,” he lamented. “When she’s gone, we may miss her.”

Dr. Dawkins wasn’t buying it. “I won't miss her at all,” he said. “Not a scrap. Not a smidgen.”

Read the rest here.

[Dardedar]

Love the old aunt analogy!

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I had a crazy old aunt I don't miss a bit and another one I will miss sorely when she leaves. It all depends on your relationship to the aunt. Should all religion be done away with, I would sorely miss "holy days" - the ones I celebrate are based on the 8 old prechristian solar (2 soltice & 2 equinox) and cross-quarter (approx the 3rd or 4th of February, May, August, and November) ones, but since most religions have holidays about the same times, it really doesn't matter. I love the reminder that we are a part of the natural world and caring for each other is how a species survives (even if not necessarily how an individual does). I really wouldn't want to give that up.

I think human beings have to have time to assimilate new concepts. I doubt seriously that Newton personally could have gone any further with his model, because he'd reached his ego's "good stopping point" and even the scientific world needed a breather before tackling the next phase. Considering the time and place Newton lived, saying "I don't understand, but god does" is logical - and a whole lot easier on the ego than saying "this is as far as I personally can go, but this isn't the answer." Same thing with Wegner's "continental drift" which took a generation (of ridicule) before it became the scientifically-accepted plate tectonics. God works well as a place-saver (like the zero, which means nothing but allows us to work with numbers much more efficiently than the Romans did) when a person or concept reaches the "gotta take a breather" stage.

[Doug]

I had a crazy old aunt I don't miss a bit and another one I will miss sorely when she leaves. It all depends on your relationship to the aunt. Should all religion be done away with, I would sorely miss "holy days" - the ones I celebrate are based on the 8 old prechristian solar (2 soltice & 2 equinox) and cross-quarter (approx the 3rd or 4th of February, May, August, and November) ones, but since most religions have holidays about the same times, it really doesn't matter.

DOUG
We can still celebrate the same "holy days." Like Halloween. It is no longer a religious holiday for 99% of people. Have the holiday without the religion. You get the best of the holiday and ditch the worst.

I love the reminder that we are a part of the natural world and caring for each other is how a species survives (even if not necessarily how an individual does). I really wouldn't want to give that up.

DOUG
You don't have to.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I know I won't have to give up my "holy" days and what they mean to me. But the suggestion further up was getting rid of religion altogether and not missing it. If it was totally erased - nothing is "holy" nor "sacred" - I would miss that. Do I miss what passes for "holy" during the mass xmas shopping frenzy? Heck no. Would I miss a "specialness" around the winter solstice by whatever name. Heck yes.

It is amusing that christians really love the "in the midst of darkness, we are thankful for the light" but have totally erased the summer solstice "in the midst of light, we are thankful for the dark" - are they so afraid of the dark? In nature, the dark is where the hunted hide, it's protective. Dark is also the womb we all came from. (The irony of fetus-worshippers who can't deal with the dark!) I guess it's just that religion severs the connection to the natural world (or tries to anyway).

[Doug]

Would I miss a "specialness" around the winter solstice by whatever name. Heck yes.

DOUG
Days are only special if we make them so. Humanists can make any day special, and so can anyone else. Form a tradition, and it takes on meaning.

That's why I back the HumanLight celebration.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

There are special "personal" days like birthdays and anniversaries, but that's not what we're addressing here. A community special day - whatever you call it, and all communities have special days around the winter soltice if nothing else - is different from a personal day. I am no longer a christian (probably never was one, but didn't realize it until I ask myself if I truly believed the stuff you have to believe to be a christian), but I truly enjoy and would greatly miss the lights and the decorations of the season. Even the Salvation Army santas and almost half of the music are "pleasurable conceits" I enjoy during this time of year. The "mass effect" of a special day a sizeable number of households in your city, town, or hamlet decorate for v. the personal special day is like the difference between a field of bluebonnets and a single bluebonnet on the side of the road. Both are beautiful, but the only thing that makes me homesick for Texas every year is missing those fields of bluebonnets.

[Doug]

Both are beautiful, but the only thing that makes me homesick for Texas every year is missing those fields of bluebonnets.

I am originally from Texas. I used to miss it, but GW Bush cured me of that.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Like I said, the ONLY thing I miss about Texas is the fields of bluebonnets in the spring (and that only happens if there's enough rain winter over - last winter's drought meant no fields of bluebonnets when I went down for my younger son's wedding in March). Besides, W is only nominally a Texan - he was only there because his daddy was in the oil bidness.