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."
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."
posted by Kira at 4:03 PM
1 Comments:
#1 - I recently read an article in Tricycle magazine (Spring 2008), where Robert Bellah argued that religion is a "meaning-making sphere" which is valuable and necessary for human culture to interpret for themselves the findings of science, the fact-finding sphere. I agree. Add to that, point #2...
#2 - This is my favorite quote (Edward O. Wilson, National Geographic Magazine, May 2006): "The universe is so beautiful and complex and suprising, and life is too. You remember Darwin's line, "Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved"? We see this far more than Darwin could. We see right down to the molecular level, how truly extraordinary life is as a phenomenon. There you have more to summon spirituality than anything provided by the late Iron Age desert kingdom scribes who wrote the Holy Bible. They created an impressive piece of literature. Buth they really didn't understand the world around them or the stars above. They metaphorized them, put poetry into them - they did the best they could. But still and all, they fell far short of what humanity is capable of feeling in a sense of the sacred and aesthetic beauty."
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