Can Science and Religion Get Along?
at 9:32 am on Tuesday, 8 March 2011
“WASHINGTON, D.C.—Can pastoral warnings of fire and brimstone be redirected toward a heating planet in the interest of preserving God’s creation? Or are those who build creation museums hopeless ideologues whose Stone Age ideas should be buried once and for all?
“Those were among the topics of discussion at a seminar here yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . . .”
So opened an online Science NOW article of 19 February 2011.
read the article
Can “Supernatural” phenomena be scientifically tested?
at 9:56 am on Tuesday, 2 November 2010
A recent article on the Cosmic Variance blog has a very nice description of how science might go about responding to claims of the supernatural. This article adds, significantly, I believe, to the discussion of the relationship between religion and science.
Cosmic Variance, 11/10/2010. http://bit.ly/dkhqKG
Who Are the Science Deniers?
at 9:28 am on Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Hopefully without sounding angry, I would like to briefly explore a rough categorization of people who deny either Darwin, Einstein, or global warming. It appears that they disbelieve for similar reasons, and can be divided into three rough groups.
1) They don’t understand the science or they are simply not interested enough to think about it themselves and they accept the word of someone they consider an authority.
2) They can understand most of the science pretty well, at least in general, but they deny it because they don’t want to believe it. Their reasons may be religious, economic, or political.
The religious denier of evolution, for example, believes evolution theory contradicts the word of God. The same person may believe that God created the earth for mankind to dominate and would not let us harm the earth by our activities. Or they may believe that it is irreligious hubris for humans to presume to want to control the climate.
The economic denier is likely to have an interest in fossil fuels, manufacturing, the stock market, or other issues that might suffer if global warming theory interferes with commerce or the economy in any way.
The non-professional political denier might not want government messing with their life-style by making a bunch of regulations, rules, and limits on things they think ought to be free.
3) There are surely some deniers who understand the science pretty well in general, and who understand it well enough to know that it is probably true, but have ulterior motives for denying it. A preacher might not want to affirm global warming in a sermon to avoid offending or frightening his flock. A politician might deny it because s/he knows his/her constituents don’t believe global warming or are hostile to the idea for other reasons. I believe there are a lot of politicians who understand global warming pretty well, but who are denying it now that we are about to have an election where the lines are solidly drawn around global warming. We have senators and congresspersons who have supported and even introduced bills for energy policy based on global warming, who now deny the science and are voting against bills they previously supported. It looks suspicious when nearly all Democrats appear to believe in human-caused climate change, and nearly all Republicans are deniers.
Opinion-makers are hard to figure. Many of them simply want to stir the pot. Their business thrives on controversy and if there is not a controversy going they will invent one. Some of them have literally millions of avid followers. The climate change controversy was practically invented by them and they restir this pot on a regular basis, using the same old, solidly refuted propositions they started out with. They don’t give a damn about the science.