Science and faith again

I may have to memorize this one so I can trot it out whenever this comes up, because the past couple years of me attempting to articulate it have now all been trumped.

Jerry Coyne is a professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, whose religious beliefs were not stated for the article from which I grabbed this. (University Alumni Magazine February 2006, "Beyond Belief: religious U of C students find ways to square conviction with critical thinking.")

"Having [Intelligent Design] in an evolution class would be like including the flood theory or the flat-earth theory in a geology class. ... I don't try to make the literal resolution [between science and Christianity]. We're always changing and growing, and some things are acceptable at different times. Science is a story just like the religious stories. We are trying to find out how things happened biologically and physically. In every age there's a story. ... In many ways it's an act of faith that the rational process will lead men to a higher place. That thesis has never been proven. ... [As for Intelligent Design,] in science there's almost unanimous agreement on what the process is. On the ID side there are 50 to 100 camps who would not agree on the process, what is scripture and what isn't. It's not their career but a belief. ... [The scientific process may] take hundreds of years, but it works."

Quantum perspective

I wrote today:

I've been reading about quantum physics lately, and it's an amazing toy that ALWAYS works, but it's empty of any implications regarding what it actually describes - the nature of reality - and sometimes when I'm reading it seems that the reason it works is because it's a perfectly self-contained and internally consistent descriptive system - it works because it works, not because it's direct observation of a real thing. The way that horoscopes sound excellent, because the way they describe people is distinct and internally consistent and looks productive, but refers to universal traits, so it doesn't necessarily get to the bottom of whatever it is we are in any meaningful way. So I wonder if we obscure underlying reality by describing it in quantum terms, leading us to think about reality in a way that is insightful in a direction AWAY from what things really are. I don't know if that's very clear.