Free for All on Science and Religion

[noodle]

This was in today's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/science/21belief.html?ex=1164776400&en=f6a1b1fb00d94208&ei=5070&emc=eta1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/science/21belief.html?ex=1164776400&en=f6a1b1fb00d94208&ei=5070&emc=eta1)



Maybe the pivotal moment came when Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/nobel_prizes/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) 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 (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/neil_degrasse_tyson/index.html?inline=nyt-per), director of the Hayden Planetarium (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/hayden_planetarium/index.html?inline=nyt-org) 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.


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.


“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.” By shying away from questioning people’s 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 don’t 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.

[Jeff_Ricks]

I loved the article! This quote summed up my take on the subject:

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.”Amen to that, Richard. :cool:

[helemon]

This was in today's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/science/21belief.html?ex=1164776400&en=f6a1b1fb00d94208&ei=5070&emc=eta1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/science/21belief.html?ex=1164776400&en=f6a1b1fb00d94208&ei=5070&emc=eta1)



I thought the article in Time with Dawkins and Francis Collins was interesting. I thought it was interesting that in the end Dawkins stated that he has not ruled out the possibility of some higher force influencing or directing the universe. What he has ruled out is that the modern religions, with their dogmatic stance on who or what God is, have the answer.

Collins position that God used evolution in order to 'hide his tracks' so that the believer would have to search after him I found rather odd since Christians also like to reject evolution because so many things in nature seem to testify of a divine creator. This argument is even present in the Book of Mormon.

On the topic of altruism I thought both Dawkins and Collins missed the boat. Dawkins argued that altruism was a behavior that developed when we lived in small tribal bands and thus looking out for your neighbor also meant looking out for the welfare of someone who shared your genes. Dawkins then goes on to reason that this instinct is now transfered to whoever is living near us. I think it is a little more complex. I do think that the selfish gene may be at work. I think this fact can be attested to by cases of racial violence or the tendency of some people to prefer people who are similar in appearance to themselves.

But I think it is also true that if you are living in close proximity to other people there is a high likelihood that you rely on them for you survival whether they are the mechanic, your boss, your neighbor, the cop. It would be very difficult to accomplish the things you need to do in your day to day life if everyone was always thinking about how they can stick it to their neighbor and treating those around them unkindly. It is in everyones best interest to act in an honest and polite manner to those we encounter. Our complex society could not function otherwise. People who ignore these rules are ostracized from their society.

I also find it odd when people like Collins talk about some innate sense of good and evil that people have inside them that is so different than that of the animals. Altruistic behaviors can be seen in various social and pack animals. What I would like Collins to address is where those "uniquely human" altruistic feelings go when the person or group in question is an outsider? Where were those feelings during the Spanish Inquisition or the Children's Crusade? People are just as capable to commit atrocities as miracles and far too often how something is classified depends more on whether the individual is looking at the event from the winning or loosing side of the equation.

In the end it seems that Darwin's rule is still paramount. Those things which facilitate the individuals survival and the survival of their people, their culture, and their way of life are classified by humans as "good" where as those people, cultures, and ideas that threaten the survival of the individual, their people and their culture are "evil." It is all about competition for resources and the maintaining or obtaining of social power in order to have more control over those limited resources.

[ben]

I thought the article in Time with Dawkins and Francis Collins was interesting.

I read this article and was wondering were I could find the full Q and A. Anyone know?