As scientists, we need to understand and appreciate the wide range of views
in the religious world. Particularly in the Christian sphere, these views
range all the way from strict biblical inerrancy ("the Bible was written by
man but dictated by God") to that of an appreciation for the biblical
stories as one culture's attempts to understand and explain the
inexplicable.
So with the subject of evolution some religious groups may say that creation
happened 6000 years ago in the exact 6-day timeframe and sequence as
described in the first chapter of Genesis (ignoring or rationalizing away
some conflicting sequences described in another creation story in the second
chapter of Genesis). The intelligent design proponents may say these
Genesis stories are more allegorical, that all this may have taken billions
of years as science says, but God intervened and continues to intervene at
each stage of the process (the tinkering clockmaker metaphor). The Deists
say that God set the process in motion but has not been involved since (God
as the perfect clockmaker). And then some say that God set in motion a
process and a set of laws that produced what we scientifically understand (a
self-adjusting and ever-changing clock, to carry the metaphor to an
extreme).
All of these religious viewpoints would agree that there are things that
science will never be able to explain. In the who-what-where-when-why-how
of inquiry, they say the realm of science is the what-where-when-how and the
realm of religion is the who-why (perhaps it would be more precise to say
that science handles "why" and "what" at the cause and effect level but
religion deals with them at the transcendent level).
Some religious groups have insisted and continue to insist that science will
never be able to demonstrate some of the what-where-when-how stuff (600
years ago it was the motion of the earth around the sun, now it's evidence
of one species actually evolving into another). That's what seems to be
behind their promoting the investigation of certain high-profile concepts
such as creationism with scientific methodology, e.g., the International
Journal of Creation Research. But these efforts tend to be self-defeating
as science continues to find solid explanations for these phenomena: today's
divine intervention becomes tomorrow's testable hypothesis and next year's
verified and measured fact.
Other religious groups are quite satisfied to say, with some confidence,
that science will never provide an explanation for such basic questions as:
Why is there something instead of nothing? What is nothing? What was there
before there was something? What is beyond the universe? What is beyond
time? Since information is infinite and we are finite, can we ever know
everything? These are the inexplicables, these others say, that fall into
the realm of religion.
So where we get into trouble as scientists is when we insist that only the
scientifically observable realm is real and important; that the religious
realm is just irrelevant superstition. We may indidually choose to believe
that to be the case, but we shouldn't do so with a hubris of scientific
arrogance by saying, in effect, if it can't be measured it can't be valid.
As I said before, science is never going to be able to explain everything.
What science can and will explain is crucial, but some of the inexplicables
are pretty important to quite a few other people. And many of these other
people are rational scientists.
Warren W. Aney
Senior Wildlife Ecologist
(and Presbyterian elder)
-----Original Message-----
From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Ashwani Vasishth
Sent: Saturday, 05 May, 2007 08:22
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Subject: News: Conservatives Split Over Darwin and Evolution
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/05/us/politics/05darwin.html?ref=science
A Split Emerges as Conservatives Discuss Darwin
By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: May 5, 2007
Evolution has long generated bitter fights between the left and the
right about whether God or science better explains the origins of
life. But now a dispute has cropped up within conservative circles,
not over science, but over political ideology: Does Darwinian theory
undermine conservative notions of religion and morality or does it
actually support conservative philosophy?
On one level the debate can be seen as a polite discussion of
political theory among the members of a small group of intellectuals.
But the argument also exposes tensions within the Republicans' "big
tent," as could be seen Thursday night when the party's 10 candidates
for president were asked during their first debate whether they
believed in evolution. Three - Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; Mike
Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas; and Representative Tom
Tancredo of Colorado - indicated they did not.
For some conservatives, accepting Darwin undercuts religious faith
and produces an amoral, materialistic worldview that easily embraces
abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other practices they
abhor. As an alternative to Darwin, many advocate intelligent design,
which holds that life is so intricately organized that only an
intelligent power could have created it.
Yet it is that very embrace of intelligent design - not to mention
creationism, which takes a literal view of the Bible's Book of
Genesis - that has led conservative opponents to speak out for fear
their ideology will be branded as out of touch and anti-science.
[...]
Cheers,
-
Ashwani
Vasishth [EMAIL PROTECTED] (818) 677-6137
http://www.csun.edu/~vasishth/
http://www.myspace.com/ashwanivasishth
